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MY COLLEGE DAYS 



BY 



EOBEET TOMES 






NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1 880 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Preparing for College. — The Grammar-school of Columbia 
College. — Rector Ogilby. — Discharge. — New Rector. — 
Dignity and Severity. — Pedantic Jocularity. — Elephantine 
Banter. — Its Victims. — Anthon. — Author. — Scholar. — 
Teacher. — His Personal Appearance and Manner. — 

Mc and the Higher Mathematics. — His Successor. — 

A Slashing Teacher. — My Destiny. — An Episcopal Strong- 
hold. — Examination for College Page 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Travelling to Hartford. — First Sight of College. — Admis- 
sion. — ^A Dungeon. — College Precincts. — A Scientific 
Irishman. — The Neighborhood. — The Boarding-houses. — 
The Hog River. — The City. — The Students. — Religiosi. 
— The Independents. — The Roysterers. — Old Traditions. 
— Southern Students. — The Southern Society. — Character 
of Southern Students 24 

CHAPTER III. 

My Class. — Standing. — Classmates. — Brilliant Writers. — 
Bishop Williams. — Archbishop Bayley. — Hon. John Bige- 
low. — Literary Genius. — Libraries. — Book Appropriation. 



4 CONTENTS. 

— Sham Professor. — Miscellaneous Talent. — A Brief Val- 
edictory . Page 37 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Faculty. — The Sham Professors. — The Real Teachers. 
— Sleepy David. — Old Caloric. — The President. — Higli 
Jinks. — A Change. — The New President. — Holland. — 
Professor Jim. — Habits of Exercise. — Vacations. — Chol- 
era in New York. — A Speech of Henry Clay. — Governor 
Ellsworth. — Isaac Touce}'. — Gideon Welles. — Hunger- 
. ford, the Lawyer 50 

CHAPTER V. 

Graduation. — An old Diploma. — Its Suggestions. — Choice 
of Profession. — The Bells and Mason Good's Works. — 
Enter University of Pennsylvania. — Professor Horner. — 
The Mysteries and Horrors of Dissecting-room. — Dr. Hare. 
— Chemical Displays. — Surgery at Blocksley Hospital. 
— Professor Gibson. — Other Professors. — Doctors made 
Easy. — Passage to Liverpool. — A Jolly Voyage. —Dr. 
Hawks. — Arrival in Liverpool. — Departure for Edin- 
burgh 62 

CHAPTER VL 

Arrival in Edinburgh. — The Summer Session at the Univer- 
sity. — My First Quarters. — A Disorderly Household. — 
Historical, Romantic, and Personal Associations. — The 
High Street of Edinburgh. — The Little Chapel. — Alison 
on "Taste." — Mackay the Actor. — Holyrood Palace. — 
Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crag. — Heriot's Hospital. — 
The Meadows. — The Links and Golfers. — Convent. — The 
Site of the College. — Murder of Darnley. — The Univer- 
sity and its Associations . 73 



CONTENTS. 5 

CHAPTER VII. 

Contrasts. — Hume's Monument. — Ambrose's. — Scott's and 
Hume's Houses. — Jeffrey at Home and at Court. — Mur- 
chiston. — Hawtliornden. — Dr. Chalmers. — Guthrie. — A 
Visit from Dr. Hawks. — His Companion. — Sydney Smith. 
— Surgeon's Square. — Burke and Hare. — Dr. Knox. — 
Allen Thompson. — "Never Touched the Ground." — Por- 
trai^of Knox. — De Quincey and his Daughter. — Macau - 
lay. — Dr. Abercrombie Page 82 

CHAPTER Vlir. 

My First Invitation. — A Jolly Dinner. — Edinburgh Conviv- 
iality. — A Surprise. — Religious Topics. — J. Shank More. 
— Edinburgh Society. — A Disputed Child. — Mr. Craig. — 
Bishop Ravenscroft. — From Slave- whip to Crosier. — A 
Change of Quarters. — Mr. Ainslie. — A Friend of Burns. — 
Clurinda. — A Genial Neighbor. — Marriage at Three-score- 
and-ten. — A Festival. — Campbell the Poet in the Chair. — 
Genius in Eclipse. — Professor Blackie in Youth . . 96 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Winter Session. — Rush of Students. — The Classes. — 
Students from Everywhere. — The Full-blooded Negro. — 

Social Inversion. — Distinguished Students. — W of 

Nottingham. — G of Newcastle. — Charles Maitland. — 

Faith in Chemistry. — Samuel Brown. — Poet and Philoso- 
pher. — Unity of Matter. — Professor Anderson of Glas- 
gow 110 

CHAPTER X. 

A Band of Revellers.— Making a Night of it.— The Two 
Brothers R . — Their Historv, — A Mother, and not a 



6 CONTENTS. 

Mother. — A Victim to Slavery. — The Third Brother's 

Fate.— Description of the R 's.— The Eldest R . 

—A Fancy Ball.— The End of the Eldest.— The Younger 

R in Paris. — Incidents of his Career. — Adventures 

in England. — His Return to the United States. — Disap- 
pearance Page 123 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Brothers F . — An American Claimant for a Scotch 

Title. — A Retired and Happy Life. — Sudden Aspirations. 
— Lord Lovat. — Devotion of a Clan. — A Long Suit in Ed- 
inburgh. — Luxury and the Jews. — A Day of Reckoning. 
— An Adverse Decision. — Family Ruin. — The Eldest Son. 
— The Survivors of a Wreck, — Another American Claim- 
ant. — Precocious Benevolence. — A Triumph. — Final Re- 
sult 134: 

CHAPTER XII. 

General Disunion of Students. — A Remarkable Exception. 
— Political Unanimity. -^Prevalence of Toryism. — Influ- 
ence of Tory Professors. — Professor Wilson's Example 
and Teachings. — Royal Medical Society. — Its Traditions. 
— Sir James Mackintosh. — The Brunonian Controversy. 
— Speculative Society. — Botanical and Geological Tours. 
— Exercises. — New Haven. — Huntsmen and Horsemen. — 
The Theatre. — Church Intolerance. — Studies for a De- 
gree. — Examinations. — Defence of Thesis. — An Exami- 
nation Passed. — The Three Munros 144 

CHAPTER XIIL 

Munro Tertius. — A Nonchalant Professor. — Calling Cards. 
— A Personal Description. — Strange Illustration of Filial 
Affection. — First Sight of Pickwick. — A Dignified Pro- 



CONTENTS. 7 

fessor. — Hope. — Resplenden t Demonstration s. — Kemp. — 
Compression of Gases. — A Great Chemical Feat. — Antic- 
ipation of Modern Discovery. — The Eclipse of a Man of 
Genius Page 158 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Professor Alison, — The Good Physician, — " Om- Doctor." 
— Robust and Gentle, — Sir Robert Christison, — Hard 
Weiker, — Powers of Endurance. — Personal Appearance. 
— Sir William Hamilton. — Author of "Cyril Thornton." 
— Hundreds of Skulls. — A Death-blow to Phrenology. — 
Professor Wilson. — His Works. — Personal Appearance. 
— As a Lecturer. — The Dogs. — How a Professor was 
Appointed. — Pillans 169 

CHAPTER XV. 

Close of Winter Session. — Vacations. — To Glasgow by 
Canal. — A Jolly Archdeacon, — Glenarbuck. — Blantyre 
House. — A Noble Fee. — A Tragic End. — A Winter Voy- 
age. — Illness at Sea, — A Gentle Seafaring Man, — The 
North Atlantic in Winter. — A Victim. — Hoisting Sail. — 
Detection. — Arrival in New York, — A Mitigated Wel- 
come 180 

CHAPTER XVI. 

INfy First Visit to Washington, — Appearance of the Capital. 
—The Old Gadsby's.--A Visit from Ogden Hoflfman.— A 
Sight of Daniel Webster. — The Hon. Edward Stanley. — 
A Call upon Van Buren. — The Joke of the Treasury. — 
Jesuits' College. — Wine for Boys. — Alexandria. — Horse- 
back Ride to Mount Vernon. — A Deserted Home. — Re- 
turn to Edinburgh. — An Unfortunate Petition. — First 
Medical Examination 192 



8 ' CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Last Academic Year. — Disability of Professors. — Sir 
Charles Bell. — Supplementary Teachers. — Disgraceful In- 
eflScienc3^ — Infirmary. — Heroic Practice. — High-pressure. 
— Breaking Down. — The Last Examination^ — Dr. (Sir 
James Y.) Simpson. — Dr. Sawneyson's Testimonials. — A 
Severe Calling to Account. — Defence of Thesis. — Capping. 
—Exit Page 200 



MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Preparing for College. — The Grammar-school of Columbia 
College. — Rector Ogilby. — Discharge. — New Rector. — 
Dignity and Severity. — Pedantic Jocularity. — Elephantine 
Banter. — Its Victims. — Anthon. — Author. — Scholar. — 
Teacher. — His Personal Appearance and JVIanner. — 

Mc and the Higher Mathematics. — His Successor. — 

A Slashing Teacher. — My Destiny. — An Episcopal Strong- 
hold. — Examination for College. 

As the Grammar-school of Columbia College 
in New York was the last elementary classical 
academy of which I was a pupil, it may be re- 
garded as the place where I was. prepared for 
college. This Grammar-school, when I entered it, 
was in Murray Street, New York, in the rear of 
Columbia College, upon a part of the grounds of 
which it, a plain, square brick structure, was built. 
There was no access, however, from the school 
to the park of the college, for fear, perhaps, that 
we rude boys might trample down its greensward, 



10 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

and commit havoc in its smootli paths and trim 
shrubbery. We, therefore, during the brief in- 
termissions between school-hours, confined our- 
selves within the contracted court-yard, or over- 
flowed, in our races and rough-and-tumble games 
of "tag" and "prisoner's base," into the neigh- 
boring streets, 

John D. Ogilby was then rector of the school, 
Avhich, as far as its business management and 
financial responsibility were concerned, was en- 
tirely under the control of the trustees of Colum- 
bia College. The general conduct of the school, 
and the especial teaching of the head or " Rec- 
tor's class," fell to the duty of Ogilby, who at 
the time could not have been older than eighteen 
or nineteen years of age. He had been transfer- 
red, I think, even before he had graduated, from 
his place as a student of the senior class to the 
important position of rector of the school. With 
a precocious dignity, not only of character and 
manner but of personal appearance, his extreme 
youth did not appear in any way an obstacle to 
his management. He was remarkably tall for 
his age, and so strenuously erect in his bearing 
that his back bent in and his chest curved for- 
ward to such an extent that he actually seemed 
crooked. He had a pair of piercing black eyes, 
and the most serious if not stern expression I 



COLUMBIA COLLEGE GRAMMAR-SCHOOL. 11 

have ever noticed upon so young a face. He 
was evidently earnest to enthusiasm in his work, 
and he was the first teacher I had yet encoun- 
tered for whom I had any respect. He was a 
rigid disciplinarian, and no sparer of the rod; 
and, though I often felt its smart, I bear him no 
grudge, for I have no doubt it was well-deserved. 
He had great sympathy with any mark of con- 
scientiousness he might discover in a boy. I 
recollect, on one occasion, on his leaving the 
room, a tumult arose in the class. On return- 
ing, he asked each one of a number of suspected 
boys, who had been guilty of this breach of dis- 
cipline? Every one denied it until he came to 
me, when I boldly confessed my fault. In a mo- 
ment of angry impulse he dismissed me from the 
room, and ordered me to take a place in a lower 
class; but I had hardly fulfilled his command 
when he hurried to me, with an unusual expres- 
sion of kindness in his face, and said, in his gen- 
tlest tone of voice, " T , you told the truth, 

and therefore I forgive you ; return to your 
class." He then searched out the other offend- 
ers who had deceived him, and, upon detection, 
punished them with the utmost severity. 

I had been so wretchedly schooled before, and 
though I had nominally gone over a large sur- 
face of study, had penetrated so little into its 



12 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

depths, that I felt myself to be very deficient, 
and found it impossible to take a very high po- 
sition in my class, of which most of the boys had 
long enjoyed the advantage of a more thorough 
drilling. I, however, sustained myself with tol- 
erable credit, and managed to make such prog- 
ress as would have enabled me to enter college 
with the best of my comrades, in the autumn of 
the next year. It was, however, thought advis- 
able to postpone (as I was very young) my en- 
trance ; and, being able to spare the time, I left 
the school and travelled in Europe for several 
months. 

On my return, after my absence,! resumed my 
studies at the Grammar-school in Murray Street. 
As- the class of which I had been a member for 
a few months had entered college, I joined that 
which succeeded it. As this now became the 
rector's class in turn, I was again under the im- 
mediate tuition of Mr. Ogilby. CThis gentleman, 
however, was soon discharged from his office, in 
consequence of some innovations, of German ori- 
gin, which he had introduced into the system of 
education at the school, and the trustees of the 
antiquated institution in our rear by no means 
approved of. ) 

Charles Anthon, LL.D., professor of Greek and 
Latin in Columbia College, succeeded Mr. Ogilby 



DR. ANTHON. 13 

as the Rector of the Grammar-school, retaining, 
at the same time, his former position. He took 
great care, however, not to derogate from his 
professorial dignity, by delegating all the less 
dignified duties of the school-master to his hum- 
ble subordinates. He never wielded the cane, or 
deigned even so much as to box a boy's ears, but 
the pains and penalties vicariously inflicted were 
none the less severe. He established a Draconian 
code — one law of which, I recollect, though not 
from personal experience of the penalty, was that 
the last four boys of each class should be daily 
whipped. 

Dr. Anthon reserved for himself, as his espe- 
cial duty, the teaching of Greek and Latin to the 
first, or Rector's class, and exercised a general 
supervision over the whole school. He appointed 
all the teachers, who, mostly young men taught 
and disciplined by him in the college, were very 
submissive executors of his arbitrary will, and 
showed, especially in the department of admin- 
istering punishment, much zeal. The w^ork of 
teaching our class was elementary and easy for 
the learned professor, who seemed to regard it 
rather as a distraction from his more severe pur- 
suits than as a serious labor in itself. He sport- 
ed with it as if it were a toy, and performed a 
variety of strange antics in the course of his 



14 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

playful treatment of us. His humors and eccen- 
tricities were of a heavy and pedantic sort. He 
insisted upon us boys, who were of his, the Rec- 
tor's, class, answering the roll-call with the Greek 
word jji^u), I am. come — reminding us at the same 
time, with that fulness of definition characteris- 
tic of him, that the term meant not only " I am 
come," but that " I am come, and I remain ;" in 
a word, that " I am here." The boys belonging 
to the lower classes of the classical department 
were allowed the use of the Latin adsum, while 
those who were merely studying English and the 
modern languages were restricted to the simple 
vernacular, " Here." He affected a ludicrous re- 
spect for the dignity of his especial class, and I 
recollect that he once pretended to take great of- 
fence at my calling the foot of it the tail, which 
he declared to be an appellation derogatory to 
even the terminal end of a body of pupils hon- 
ored by the charge of so august a personage as 
himself. The first boy in the class he dignified 
with the title of Imperator, ?ind the second Dux; 
and he had a variety of other marks of distinc- 
tion and also of degradation for the rest, accord- 
ing to their position. 

Anthon was a terribly persistent banterer in 
his own peculiar, elephantine way. One poor lad, 
who had made a bad show at recitation, being 



BANTER. 15 

asked what he had been doing at home instead 
of learning his lesson, conscientiously answered 
that he had been reading " Oliver Twist," and 
was ever after called, by the professor, Oliver 
Twist.* " Now," he would say, '' let Oliver Twist 
try his hand ;" " Wake up, Oliver Twist ;" " That 
will do, Oliver Twist;" and so on, until the poor 
lad was so v/orried by this bantering, and took 
it so much to heart, that his health and cheer- 
fulness were seriously impaired, and his parents 
were obliged to remove him to another school. 
There was a heavy fellow of the name of De 
Witt, who, from the beginning, had precipitated 
by the mere weight of dulness to the bottom of 
the class, and remained there to the last. He 
became the especial object of the professor's ban- 
ter. He had remarkably large, bushy eyebrows, 
and he was constantly reminded that this had 
been always regarded as a sign of intelligence 
until now, when it was manifestly proved by his 
case to be quite the reverse. He was also ask- 
ed, again and again, whether the famous Dutch 
statesman, De Witt, was an ancestor of his; while, 
at the same time, the poor youth Avho bore the 
name was told that if he were, he was a dread- 
fully degenerate descendant. Our class-fellow, 

* This was some time after I left the school. 



16 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

however, was of sterner stuff than poor " Oliver 
Twist," and bore all this banter without even a 
sensible twitch of his copious eyebrows, and re- 
mained immovable in his destined place at the 
foot of the class. 

Anthon was, undoubtedly, a good but not a 
great and liberal scholar. He pursued the tra- 
ditional methods of studying and teaching the 
Greek and Latin, and had a comprehensive and 
thorough knowledge of the verbal significations 
and construction of those languages. He was 
an industrious compiler of school and college 
text-books, and made a considerable fortune by 
his publications, which obtained a wide sale, not 
exclusively due to their excellence but greatly 
owing to his prominent position as a professor 
of an institution which at that time ranked high 
in the United States, and gave a considerable 
prestige to any educational work emanating from 
it. He was an indefatigable worker, and allowed 
nothing to interfere with his habits of industry. 
He was hardly ever seen out of the precincts of 
his college, and checked every intrusion upon his 
retirement. Over the mantel-piece of his study 
he had inscribed, in large letters, " Short visits 
MAKE LONG FRIENDS." His productious had no 
claim to origipality, and he freely appropriated 
to his own use the researches of foreign scholars, 



VERBAL SCHOLARSHIP. 17 

especially of Germany, with an iinscrnpulous dis- 
regard, it was charged, of due acknowledgment. 
He greatly prided himself upon his Horace, which 
was a very bulky volume principally remarkable 
for its profuse translations, which made it very 
acceptable to the superficial American student. 
These translations, which were given in rather 
turgid words and phrases, he seemed to regard 
with much self-satisfaction, and that pupil who 
repeated them with the most verbal exactness in 
his recitations was sure of the highest favor and 
commendation. He would frequently translate 
to the class their lessons in Homer or other clas- 
sical work in the course of study, and insist next 
day at the recitation upon the precise English 
expressions he had used ; so it became a habit 
with the boys, who were sufficiently brisk as 
scribes, to note down each word as he uttered it. 
Anthon was undoubtedly an excellent teacher 
of his kind, and he was the first one I ever was 
under who succeeded in giving me an interest 
in classical study. He made, I recollect, even 
the Greek Testament a pleasure ; and I can recall 
some of his comments and interpretations which, 
though new to me, were undoubtedly familiar 
to scholars. They revealed to me, for the first 
time, the meaning of that sacred Volume, and 
greatly excited my interest in its study. His 

2 



18 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

derivations of Jesus and Christ from iaof.iai, to 
heal, and xP'^j to anoint, and baptism from /3aw, 
to go — " go down into the water " — showing ap- 
parently, as he used to say, that adult baptism 
by dipping was the original form, struck me, in 
my youthful ignorance, with an agreeble surprise. 
His statement that, whenever our Saviour is al- 
luded to in the IsTew Testament, ekeivoq, which sig- 
nifies merely he, implying delegated power, was 
never used, but always avroq, he of his own au- 
thority; and his inference that this proved the 
divinity of Christ, was also new to me, and a sat- 
isfactory confirmation of the religious belief in 
which I had been brought up. I remember the 
fulness which the professor gave to his transla- 
tions of some words and phrases, and how he in- 
sisted upon our repeating them in every detail ; 
for example, in the well-known lines of Virgil, 
Facilis descensus Averno sed revocare gradum, 
etc., he would render the Ilic labor, hoc opus 
est, " this is the labor ; m this consists the diffi- 
culty,^'' puffing his cheeks and blowing out the 
latter phrase with all the force his breath was 
capable of. The TrpoiaTrcrey, at the beginning of 
Homer, was a word upon which he was especial- 
ly fond of dwelling, telling us how Pope had 
erroneously translated the vrpo as "premature- 
ly," while he reminded us that it simply meant 



PERPETUAL MOTION. 19 

"down;" '^ dotcm, doton to hellP'' he would bel- 
low out with his habitual emphatic burst. 

The professor was a portly man, with a large, 
square Teutonic head and shoulders — his par- 
ents were German — and a naturally sturdy body, 
though his flesh seemed unduly soft and pallid 
from want of exercise and close confinement to 
his studies. He, however, was full of life and 
activity, and, never at re.^t himself, kept his class 
in a perpetual state of animation and movement. 
He was constantly tossing about on his seat in 
the rostrum, his hands in motion twirling a large 
silver pencil-case, which he held loosely between 
the thumb and finger of the left hand and struck 
with the forefinger of the right, and his head 
ever turning as he scanned us from top to bot- 
tom, and bottom to top, while he never ceased 
talking and shouting to the boys as he correct- 
ed their translations and substituted his own, or 
sent down a question to run the gauntlet of the 
class, crying out in quick succession, Imiyera- 
tor! Dux! Smith ! Jones ! Brown ! that's it ! 
up, Robinson ! He used frequently to digress 
from the lesson under consideration, and test 
the boys' information upon some subject which 
bore not the least relation to it. I remember 
that on one occasion the form of a Maltese cross 
was asked, and the question passed rapidly down 



20 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

without meeting an answer until near the bot- 
tom of the class, when a fortunate possessor of 
the knowledge promptly replied, and much to 
his surprise was suddenly transferred to the top, 
an elevated region to which he had never aspired. 

A pompous, assuming young Irishman of the 

name of Mc was, or ought to have been, our 

teacher of arithmetic ; but anything so elementa- 
ry was quite too lowly for his lofty self-appre- 
ciation, and he persisted in lecturing upon the 
higher mathematics to a set of boys who hardly 
knew the nmltiplication table, and did not under- 
stand a word of his abstruse cogitations. He 
was soon discharged as impracticable, and I rec- 
ollect seeing him for many years afterward stalk- 
ing about the streets of New York in a shabby 
half-military coat, buttoned close to the chin to 
hide, apparently, the want of a shirt. 

His successor was an Hibernian like himself; 
tall, gaunt, and strong, with an arm as long as 
that of a gorilla — an animal he not -only resem- 
bled in appearance but ferocity. He was down- 
right and practical enough, and never lost him- 
self in the vague abstractions of Mc . He 

wielded a cane of his own length, and slashed 
with it right and left all along the benches where 
we poor lads sat cowering over our slates, strik- 
ing indiscriminately, regardless whom it might 



AN EPISCOPAL STRONGHOLD. 21 

hit, if offender or not, like a drunken Irislinian 
dealing his miscellaneous blows in a row. 

I was destined for Washington College, in 
Hartford, an institution lately established by 
the Right Rev. Dr. Brownell, Bishop of Connecti- 
cut, in the interests of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. A number of young and enthusiastic 
divines, among whom Doane, the Bishop of New 
Jersey, Potter, Bishop of New York, and the 
Rev. Dr. Hawks were, in their youth, the most 
prominent, had leagued together to wage a cru- 
sade against the predominating influence of Pres- 
byterianism in Ncav England. They according- 
ly rallied around the bishop in his collegiate 
stronghold, in the very midst of the Puritanical 
enemy, as a favorable point whence to carry on 
their war in behalf of prelacy. They were all 
enrolled either as actual or nominal ofiicers, but 
most of them, taking no part in the internal man- 
agement of the establishment, exercised their ef- 
forts in doing their best to strengthen it from 
without. These dispersing, went about the whole 
United States like so many begging friars, though 
by no means reduced to scrip and wallet, for they 
found a ready welcome at some of the most 
sumptuous tables and luxurious houses of the 
country, stirring up the faithful of the Episcoi^al 
Church, and soliciting alms for the holy cause. 



22 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

They obtained a good deal of money, but might 
have obtained a good deal more had they not 
been distracted from their rather Quixotic enter- 
prise by the inducements of the practical advan- 
tages to themselves and to their Church of a per- 
manent settlement, in the opulent and extensive 
spheres of parochial duty, in the large cities. The 
Bishop of Connecticut, accordingly, was soon left 
to shift alone as best he could in his isolated de- 
fence, which w^as reduced to such a state of weak- 
ness as to be hardly capable of suj^porting itself, 
much less of destroying the enemy. 

My father's benevolence was among the first 
evoked by the earnest appeals of the clerical beg- 
gars, and he contributed a certain sum of money 
(I do not know the amount), which carried with 
it the privilege of the presentation of a student. 
Thus paid for, as it were, in advance, I was des- 
tined to become a member of the college in Hart- 
ford. In the mean time, I remained a pupil of 
the Grammar-school, and when the time came 
for our (the Rector's) class to pass the examina- 
tion for admission into Columbia College, I, feel- 
ing, like a brave soldier on the eve of war, that it 
would not be honorable to desert my comrades, 
underwent the terrible ordeal with the rest. We 
were examined together in a body, and the pro- 
ceeding was very much like that of an ordinary 



SLIDING INTO COLLEGE. 23 

recitation, though, of course, there was no set les- 
son for the occasion. We passed up and down, 
according to our answers, as usual, and I found 
myself at the close of the examination in the sat- 
isfactory position of No. 2 in Greek, and No. 3 
in Latin, in a class of between thirty and forty. 
A lazy fellow chuckled with delight when he 
heard of the way in which the class was to be 
examined, and said that to enter college would 
be like sliding down an inclined and well-slush- 
ed board, placed between the school -house and 
college buildings, which were contiguous. His 
bright anticipations, however, were for a moment 
clouded when a wag suggested that there might 
be a nail in the board to catch him in the de- 
scent. The examination in a body was, no doubt, 
much easier for the dull and backward boys than 
if each had been forced to submit to an individ- 
ual test of his fitness ; so that the lazy fellow, who 
slipped into college with the tail of the class, 
without being asked a single question, was fully 
justified in his droll comparison. 



24 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER 11. 

Travelling to Hartford.— First Sight of College. ^Admis- 
sion. — A Dungeon. — College Precincts. — A Scientific 
Irishman. — The Neighborhood. — The Boarding-houses. — 
The Hog River. — The Cit3\ — The Students. — Religiosi. 
—The Independents. — The Eoysterers. — Old Traditions. 
— Southern Students. — The Southern Society — Character 
of Southern Students. 

I WENT alone to Hartford, in the suburbs of 
which Washington College was situated. I had 
begged hard to have a companion, but was stern- 
ly refused, not from any want of tenderness, but 
because, doubtless, as I was no longer a school- 
boy, and had reached the mature age of fourteen 
years, it was thought desirable that I should be 
thrown, as it were, on my own responsibility, with 
the view of giving me a practical lesson in self- 
reliance. In those days there were no railways ; 
and the only means of travel from New York to 
Hartford were by the steamboat and mail-coach, 
or " stage." As it was in the fine season of the 
autumn or fall when I set out, I took ray depart- 
ure in the steamboat. Sailing through Long Isl- 
and Sound and up the Connecticut River, we 



FIRST SIGHT OF COLLEGE. 25 

landed at the wooden pier of the little capital 
city, where we were greeted on our arrival by a 
large concourse of curious people and noisy boys ; 
for in those days the coming in of the boat from 
New York, two or three times a week, was an 
event which awakened the interest of the whole 
population. 

The first sight of the college buildings, built of 
rough-hewn stone, was by no means cheerful, and 
the attempt which had been made, by the addi- 
tion of tall columns of wood to the front of the 
chapel, and a gi-^at impending architrave of the 
same material to the roof of the main structure, 
all painted of a staring white color, to give an 
academic look to the whole, only gave it a more 
severe appearance, and increased the sad aspect 
of my future residence. 

The examination for admission to college, which 
had been formidable enough in anticipation, but 
by no means so in reality, being over, I was duly 
matriculated, and a room assigned to me. This, 
as I was a freshman only, was on the ground- 
floor, the higher rooms, which were regarded as 
better, having been already appropriated by the 
students of the upper classes. As I passed 
through the low portal, with its rough battered 
posts and doors, into the hall on which my room 
opened, every footfall sounding loud and dismal- 



26 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

ly — for sill, steps, and passage-way were all of 
stone — I could not help feeling as if I were being 
immured as a prisoner within the heavy walls of 
the ugly structure. As I turned the key, grating 
harshly in the rusty, unused lock, and the door 
opened, a draft of damp, mouldy air blew in my 
face, and such an aspect of solitary blankness was 
presented by the rudely planked floor, and the 
stained and broken plaster of the ceiling and 
walls of the long empty and neglected room, 
that it required no great stretch of the fancy to 
suppose that I had reached the dungeon in which 
I was to be confined. I was to be in solitary 
confinement too, for I did not know a single soul 
in the college, and had at that time no room- 
mate. Repairing at once to the convenient shop 
near by, the "proprietor of which was ever ready 
to provide anything that might be wanted by 
the student, from a bookcase to an oyster-stew, 
I purchased a set of old furniture, which had 
served I don't know how many generations of 
students before me. This consisted of a bed- 
stead, or rather bunk, a table, a couple of chairs, 
and some shelves, all shining and sticky with 
fresh varnish. So I installed myself, before the 
day was over, in my room, thus made habitable, 
if not very genial or comfortable. My first even- 
ing was lonesome, and I longed for home, but 



THE COLLEGE SURROUNDINGS. 2t 

soon became reconciled, and bore up manfully 
enough, for there was no alternative but submis- 
sion to my fate. 

The immediate grounds about the college were 
extensive and of picturesque capability, but very 
much neglected ; and the scattered gravel of the 
walk, irregularly laid and rough with fragments 
of stone and large pebbles, and the great field of 
coarse, un^ut grass and tall weeds trodden down 
in every direction by the chance steps of those 
coming and going, and the whole space bare of 
all trees or the least growth of shrubbery, in- 
creased the sombre and uninviting aspect in front 
of the rude academic buildings. In the rear 
there was the remnant of a garden, originally 
destined for botanical instruction, and a shattered 
conservatory, in the charge of an ignorant Irish- 
man, but who, in virtue of his collegiate appoint- 
ment, felt himself bound to make pretensions to 
some scientific knowledge. It used to be an 
amusement to us youths to ask him the name of 
a rare plant, in order to elicit his only and unfail- 
ing answer: '^Cactus grandljlorus, ivom Sene- 
gal, or some other part of South America," which 
he would utter with the most pompous self-as- 
surance, and in the broadest Tipperary brogue. 

In the neighborhood of the college premises 
there were some scattered houses of plank and 



28 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

sbiiiglG, painted white, most of which were mere 
cottages, although there were a few more preten- 
tious residences, in one of which Bishop Brown- 
ell, the president of the college, lived. The small- 
er tenements were generally occupied by humble 
people, some of whom were poor widows, licensed 
by the authorities to board the students, for whom 
no meals were provided within the college. For 
one dollar and seventy-five cents a week, the high- 
est price charged, these hungry youths were sup- 
plied daily with three substantial meals, at every 
one of which there was a satisfactory allowance 
of meat, while in addition there never was want- 
ing a plenitude of mush and milk, buckwheat, 
Indian cakes and slap-jacks, ai3ple, pumpkin, and 
mince pies, codfish balls, and all the other delec- 
table contrivances of the ingenious culinai-y art 
of New England. 

The college was situated in a beautiful part of 
the country near the banks of the " Little River," 
as I believe it is termed in respectful geographi- 
cal language, but which w^e students and the in- 
habitants generally called '' The Hog," an appel- 
lation strangely at variance with the lofty aspi- 
rations of an academic resort. Whatever may 
be its name, it was at that time a very pretty, 
clear stream, winding along through banks alter- 
nately of smooth pasture-land, knolls tufted with 



OLD HAETFORD. 29 

wild growth, and forest woods. I became, with 
a college comrade, joint owner of a small skiff, 
and we often navigated together the " Little Riv- 
ei*," which in the course of time we thoroughly- 
explored. In the summer we bathed in it, and in 
the winter skated on it, and it seems to me that 
without this stream my college life would have 
been dull and stagnant enough. On a bank of 
this river, near the city across which it flows in 
its course to the Connecticut, where it empties, 
Mrs. Sigourney, who at that time was regarded 
as a great literary personage, conferring much 
distinction upon the place she had honored with 
her abode, lived, in a pretty house almost hid from 
view in a thick grove of hickory and chestnut 
trees. Over " The Hog," where it traverses the 
centre of Hartford, there was a curious old wood- 
en bridge, with shops or booths built close to- 
gether on each side of it; so it looked like the 
fragment of an ordinary street. 

Hartford in those days was very different, no 
doubt, from what it is now, but I have never had 
an opportunity of seeing it in its modern aspect. 
It was then one of the most picturesque little cit- 
ies I had ever seen, with much that was rural in 
its appearance, though some of its structures were 
not wanting in indications of the opulence and 
dignity becoming a capital of the State. It re- 



30 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

tained so much regard for its traditional Puri- 
tanism as to begin the Sabbath, according to the 
Jewish model, on the Saturday evening — when 
the shops were all closed, and every amusement as 
well as business suddenly ceased — and end it on 
the Sunday at sundown, when each one resumed 
his ordinary daily pursuits. There was, more- 
over, no theatre, and the repealed demands made 
for the establishment of one were severely re- 
fused by the public authorities, and strenuously 
opposed by the general sentiment of the inhab- 
itants. 

I found my new comrades very different from 
those I had just left at the Grammar-school. All 
of them were much older ; not only the members 
of the higher classes, as was to be naturally ex- 
pected, but those that were in the same class as 
myself. Many of theai were full-grown men, who 
had already been engaged in various trades and 
pursuits of life, as is not uncommon in the New 
England colleges. This was especially the case 
with those students who were " preparing," as it 
was said, " for the ministry " — young men who, 
rather late in life, having taken a serious turn, 
had abandoned their original vocations to begin 
a collegiate course preliminary to studying the- 
ology, and becoming clergymen of the Episcopal 
Church. 



MY COLLEGE COMRADES. 31 

Many of these youths, who were poor, were 
from country towns and villages and the coun- 
try itself, and were humbly if not shabbily clad, 
rustic in appearance, and uncouth in manners. 
We called these incipient divines the religiosi, 
and felt for them a barely concealed contempt, 
giving them no credit for their pious professions, 
and uncharitably charging them wdth being actu- 
ated by interested motives in changing their vo- 
cations. We used to say that they had left their 
previous pursuits because they wanted the capac- 
ity successfully to follow them. Of one who was 
known to have been a shoemaker, it was said, 
that having tried in vain to make two shoes 
alike, he had cast aside the awl and the last in 
despair, and, assuming a convenient conversion, 
had thrown himself upon the charity of the col- 
lege, and been made a recipient of one of the nu- 
merous scholarships with which it was endowed 
for those intending to become clergymen. There 
were doubtless some truly sincere converts among 
these transformed mechanics and tradesmen, but 
there were many who gave little indication of 
having abandoned the worldliness of their pre- 
vious lives, while most had retained such habits 
and manners from their past associations as made 
their companionship hardly acceptable to the well- 
bred and refined. 



32 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

The habits and dress of these students were as 
distinctive as their bearing and manners. They 
used to lounge in their rooms, or even attend 
chapel and the lectures, and go about the col- 
lege grounds and neighborhood in a negligence 
of person and attire that greatly shocked me at 
first siglit. Their habitual dress was a long, 
loose, and almost shapeless gown of thin printed 
calico, such as is seldom seen outside of a sick- 
room, hanging in scant folds from their stooping 
shoulders down to the heels of their slipshod 
feet. This they wore on almost every occasion. 
They went to prayers in it, morning and evening, 
to recitation, and their daily meals. Their hab- 
its were very sedentary — acquired probably in 
the course of their former vocations at the tailor's 
board, the cobbler's, the joiner's bench, and be- 
hind the counter of the shopman. They seldom 
left (except in case of urgent necessity) their 
rooms, in which they passed hour after hour, ly- 
ing at full length upon their beds or vibrating to 
and fro, with their bodies crouching in a cheap 
New England rocking-chair. None of them, as 
far as I can recollect, though they had the ad- 
vantage of maturity and experience, and the pro- 
fessed motive of a high aim in life, ever excelled 
in collegiate study, or reached in after years dis- 
tinction in the Church. 



THE COLLEGE ROISTERERS. 33 

Besides the " charity " students there were sev- 
eral young men who, like them, were advanced 
in years and preparing for the ministry, but who 
differed in the important particular of being self- 
supporting. For this purpose they were permit- 
ted to absent themselves from the college during 
the whole winter session, when they taught in 
the district schools of the State. Thus, with the 
salaries received, they were enabled to meet the 
expenses of their support, and of such portions 
of the collegiate course as they were enabled 
to avail themselves of. These young men were 
of more independent and elevated character than 
the beneficiaries, and not only took a better stand 
in their classes but were held in higher general 
esteem. 

The college not being in a very prosperous 
state, there were not more than sixty or seventy 
students in all, among whom there was a suffi- 
cient number of sons of thriving parents from 
the various large cities and other flourishing 
communities to give a certain air of external re- 
spectability, at least, to the institution. These, 
however, if they had more seeming polish than 
their rustic fellow -students, were by no means 
so subdued and decorous in their behavior. To 
them, as they had given no pledges in a profess- 
ed conversion and devotedness to religion, and 

3 



34 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

consequently were more free to act in accord- 
ance with juvenile tendencies, naturally fell the 
part of sustaining the traditional reputation of 
the roistering student. These, few as they were 
in number, were quite equal to the occasion, and 
the college scrape flourished as vigorously in the 
young and puny Washington College as among 
its older and sturdier contemporaries. Hazing 
and smoking of freshmen, blocking up chapel 
doors and breaking locks, infecting recitation- 
rooms and rendering them uninhabitable, bar- 
ring out president and professors, transferring 
tin signs and sign- boards from town shops to 
college walls, and other ancient observances were 
duly honored. The roisterers quorum pars mag- 
na fai^ as I am bound to confess in this frank 
revelation of myself, were a small but very effec- 
tive band, and, while we were doing no good to 
ourselves, did much mischief and gave great tor- 
ment to others. 

There was a fair proportion of Southern stu- 
dents, to whose companionship I had been espe- 
cially commended, being told that I should find 
them to be the most gentlemanly and desirable 
associates. I, accordingly, joined their society, 
which was known as the Phi Beta, or Beta Phi; 
but what these characters w^ere intended to sig- 
nify I do not remember. It was already in a 



THE SOUTHERN STUDENTS. 35 

state of incipient dissolution when I entered, and 
although a great effort was made by us to revive 
it, by incurring a large expense for the decora- 
tion of the room in which we met, and the print- 
ing of a vast number of circulars, which we sent 
to all the old members throughout the Southern 
States, inviting them to pay our bills — an invita- 
tion they naturally cared not to avail themselves 
of — we failed to avert the catastrophe. The soci- 
ety dissolved ; and as we were responsible for its 
debts, and, as I hope and believe, paid them, we 
divided the somewhat extensive library among 
us by way of compensation. I have some of the 
books to this day ; among them a Philadelphia 
edition of " Lingard's History of England," with 
the Greek symbols of the old Phi Beta society 
scrawled on the fly-leaf of each volume. I must 
say that the dictum of those who commended 
the companionship of the Southern students to 
me was open to question ; for, though tliey had 
many qualities w^iich some might pronounce 
" gentlemanly," they hardly possessed any which 
could be regarded as very "desirable." fThey 
were the idlest fellows in the whole college — self- 
indulgent, profuse in expenditure, always ready 
to incur and seldom scrupulous in paying debts, 
habitually dirty in person, and negligent in the 
care of their clothes, though occasioually expeq- 



36 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

sively and showily dressed. They resembled in 
this respect the negroes, among whom the great- 
est part of their lives had been spent, and whose 
habits they had acquired ; who, after grovelling 
six days of the week in filth and rags, spend all 
their money in purchasing bright-colored clothes 
and ribbons to decorate themselves on Sundays 
and holidays. , The rooms of these Southern stu- 
dents were generally in such a plight that few of 
ordinary nasal sensibility could venture to enter 
them, and a view of the ragged and dirty shirts 
> ^^ they generally wore would throw any establish- 
ment of laundresses and sewing-women into de- 
spair. They were the least orderly, obedient, and 
industrious of all the students; but, though they 
did no good at college, some of them became af- 
terward of prominence in their own States, and 
members of Congress. 



MY CLASS. 37 



CHAPTER III. 

My Class. — Standing. — Classmates. — Brilliant "Writers. — 
Bishop Williams. — Archbishop Bayley. — Hon. John Bige- 
low, — Literary Genius. — Libraries.— Book Appropriation. 
— Sham Professor. — Miscellaneous Talent. — A Brief Val- 
edictory. 

There were only seventeen students in the 
freshman chiss when I entered, and these dwin- 
dled down, during the four years of the collegi- 
ate course, to the small number of ten. They all 
towered high above me, for not one of them was 
a boy, and several were full-grown men. I was 
not only much younger than the rest, but appear- 
ed, from the smallness of my size, of less age than 
I was. From the very first recitation I proved 
a superiority to all my fellows, which I bore 
easily to the end of the collegiate course, being 
acknowledged, without dispute, the head of my 
class. I attribute this pre-eminence not to any 
remarkable natural talents possessed by me, or to 
severe application to my studies, but simply to 
the better discipline to which I had been subject- 
ed, especially during the last year at the Gram- 



38 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

mar- school, under that most excellent teacher, 
Dr. Anthon. My comrades were mostly from 
country schools, where, evidently, they had re- 
ceived but scant and imperfect instruction. They 
had never been well grounded in the elements — a 
deficiency in their education, now that they were 
in college, it seemed too late to supply, for it was 
presumed they knew what they most required to 
be taught. They were called upon to construe 
Homer and Horace, while they were hardly fa- 
miliar enough with their Greek and Latin gram- 
mars to conjugate rvTrrcj and amo. My advanced 
and thorough knowledge of these elements gave 
me a speed and bottom which enabled me to 
take the lead easily from the first, and to keep it 
to the last. It might, however, seem somewhat 
surprising tliat I was also enabled to surpass, as 
was the fact, my comrades in the various oth- 
er studies, in all of which, with the exception 
of English composition and declamation, I was 
generally the best. It was owing to the circum- 
.stimce that the older members of the class, some 
of whom had already been engaged in the ac- 
tive duties of life before beo-innino; the collegiate 
course, were not only naturally backward in ele- 
mentary knowledge, but very slow in developing 
their faculties and applying them to new and ad- 
vanced studies. 



A BISHOP IN EMBRYO. 39 

All my classmates appeared to me to be in- 
finitely my superiors in English composition. 
While they wrote whole essays, page after page, 
I could only succeed with very hard work in 
coupling together two or three barely consecu- 
tive sentences, puerile in thought and simple in 
expression. I listened with wonder, and not a 
little envy, to their long effusions swelling with 
full phrases, and sparkling with impossible tropes. 
I thought there was a scope of thought, an ex- 
panse of style, and a flight of the imagination 
in those wondrous productions to which it was 
hopeless to aspire. I was a poor writer, but prob- 
ably a worse critic, and was admiring, doubtless, 
in the compositions of my envied comrades, a 
diffuseness of treatment and a turgidity of ex- 
pression which were by no means preferable to 
my own costive efforts. 

Though none of the members of my class gave 
any indication, while in college, of possessing re- 
markable talents, three of them, at least, have 
arisen to very prominent positions in the world. 
One has been a minister plenipotentiary to France; 
another was Archbishop of Baltimore; and a third 
is Bishop of Connecticut. The last, my old com- 
rade John Williams, now the Right Rev. Dr. 
Williams, was the only one of the three for whom 
the possibility of such an elevation as he has 



40 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

reached could have been predicted with any show 
of reason. He, although his parents were Uni- 
tarians of Deerfield, Massachusetts, had, while a 
student at Harvard — for he did not enter our 
class until the second (sophomore) year — imbibed 
a strong preference for the Episcopal Church, 
and determined to take orders in it. He, accord- 
ingly, after much resistance on the part of his 
father and 'New England friends, abandoned the 
college at Cambridge for the more orthodox in- 
stitution, as he regarded it, of Hartford. He was 
only seventeen or eighteen years of age when I 
first knew him ; and yet, with his tall, stiff figure, 
his long serious face and high composed brow, 
his mild blue eyes, the natural fire of which, if 
they had any, was subdued by the spectacles he 
always wore, his sobriety of demeanor and meas- 
ured talk, the old-fashioned cut of his black coat, 
and his gaitered shoes, he had already the look 
and manner of a settled parish clergyman. We 
always called him " Parson Williams." He ap- 
peared much older than his age, and his conduct 
was not only in harmony with his apparent ma- 
turity of years but with his ardent profession of 
piety. He was a great admirer in those days of 
the arbitrary High-Churchman Laud ; but I never 
heard that the New England diocese of Connecti- 
cut which he administers has ever had occasion 



AN ARCHBISHOP TO BE. 41 

to complain of any undue prelatical pretensions 
on his part. 

James Roosevelt Bayley an archbishop ! I 
should sooner have thought of old James, the 
negro janitor of the college, who pretended to 
make our beds and sweep our rooms, becoming 
President of the United States ! Bayley was no 
student, and, in fact, seemed to think of nothing 
but the care, inside and out, of his own lusty, 
handsome person, and of the cigar he was per- 
petually puffing. He had a broad and ruddy 
face, and was always of a jovial humor. He 
strolled about with a rollicking gait and devil- 
may-care manner, which was perhaps the reason 
we gave him tlie nickname, by which he was uni- 
versally known, of "The Commodore;" or it is 
possible he may have expressed some predilec- 
tions for the quarter-deck, for which he seemed 
not ill-adapted, as far, at any rate, as appearances 
went. His grandfather was a Presbyterian — a 
very rich man, from whom he had great expecta- 
tions. His father and mother were both dead ; 
and as they had been, as his relatives generally 
were, Presbyterians of the strictest sect, I do not 
know how it happened that he had strayed into 
the fold of the " prelatics." On graduating from 
the college, he followed for a short period the 
profession of his father, who, Dr. Guy Carleton 



42 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

Bnyley, had been a physician of some prominence 
in New York, and for a time the chief medical 
officer of the Quarantine. Our cLass-fellow Bay- 
ley, however, did not long practise as a doctor, 
but, studying theology, was ordained a clergy- 
man, first, I think, in the Presbyterian, and after- 
ward in the Protestant Episcopal Church. While 
settled as the rector of a small parish at Harlem, 
he became very intimate with the resident Cath- 
olic priest, who is said to have exercised a good 
deal of influence over him. However this may 
be, much to the surprise of his friends generally, 
and greatly to the vexation of his Presbyterian 
grandfather, who cut him off without even the 
traditional shilling, he became suddenly a con- 
vert to Roman Catholicism, and in due course of 
time, after a residence as an acolyte in the semi- 
nary of St. Sulpice, in Paris, was consecrated a 
priest. He seems to have been an especial pro- 
tege of Archbishop Hughes, whom he served a 
long time as secretary, and was subsequently, 
through his influence, made Bishop of Newark, 
New Jersey. His final promotion was to the 
Archbishopric of Baltimore, where he died in an 
odor of great sanctity, and left a memory much 
revered by that powerful hierarchy of which he 
was regarded as one of the most zealous cham- 
pions. 



TUE DESTINED PLENIPOTENTIARY. 43 

The minister plenipotentiary that was destined 
to be, John Bigelow, was a boisterous, overgrown, 
awkward boy, to whom the indefinable nickname 
Rigdum Funidos, which some of us gave him, 
seemed not inappropriate. He was one of the 
youngest of the students, and remained so short 
a time at our college that it would have been 
difficult to form any idea of his probable future. 
He left after the second year, and became a stu- 
dent of Union College, in Schenectady, where he 
developed a taste for study. After graduating, 
he studied law in the city of New York, partly 
supporting himself in the mean time by teaching. 
With the younger Daponte (son of tlie Italian 
patriot), Parke Godwin, Eames, Tilden, Butler, 
Clarke, and others, mostly old fellow-students at 
Union College, he formed a society called " The 
Column," for the purpose of improvement in lit- 
erature and debate. These young men all be- 
came, more or less, writers for the various jour- 
nals; and Godwin and Bigelow established a week- 
ly paper. The Pathfinder^ on their own account. 
It did not prosper, though great credit was 
awarded by the critics to the articles, and es- 
pecially to some remarkable ones attributed to 
Bigelow. After the demise of The Pathfinder^ 
Bigelow, nothing discouraged with literature, 
gave up the law and devoted himself exclusively 



44 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

to the pursuit of letters, writing constantly for 
the papers and magazines, editing and compiling, 
and doing other miscellaneous work for the book- 
sellers. For a long time a contributor to the 
iV. Y. Evening Posty he at last became an edi- 
tor and proprietor conjointly with Mr. Bryant. 
Through the influence of this devoted republi- 
can paper Bigelow obtained the appointment of 
United States Consul to Paris. On the sudden 
death of Dayton, the American minister to the 
Imperial Court, and in consequence of the sup- 
posed incompetency of the Secretary of Lega- 
tion, Bigelow was immediately transferred by 
President Lincoln from the consulate to the em- 
bassy, with the title of charge cVaffaires. Sub- 
sequently he was appointed minister plenipoten- 
tiary, and upon him devolved the arduous and 
responsible duty of conducting the negotiations 
with the Imperial Court for the purpose of in- 
ducing France to withdraw its army of invasion 
from Mexico. The successful result was not a 
little due to the persistent and judicious energy 
with which Bigelow co-operated with the reso- 
lute policy of the Secretary of State, Seward, and 
the Cabinet at Washington. On his return from 
Paris, Bigelow settled in New York, and, resum- 
ing his old alliance with the democratic party, 
which had been temporarily severed during the 



LITERARY FACILITY. 45 

agitation of the Slavery question and the pvog- 
ress of the war, was elected Secretary of State 
of New York. Bis^elow has been an industrious 
publicist and author. He is the writer of a work 
on Jamaica, W. I. ; a statistical account of the 
United States, written in French ; and the editor 
of the best edition of the autobiography of Ben- 
jamin Franklin. While in Paris, he fell in with 
the original manuscript, and published it, with a 
completion of the life by himself, and the work 
is now acknowledged to be the standard biogra- 
phy of the patriot and philosopher. The article 
"Franklin," in the new edition of the JSnci/clo- 
pmdia Sritayinica, now in the course of publica- 
tion, was written by Mr. Bigelow. The unquiet, 
almost shapeless college youth has developed into 
the sedate and portly man of six feet in height, 
with an appearance of much personal dignity and 
distinction. 

Besides these three notabilities — the minister 
plenipotentiary, the archbishop, and the bishop — 
our little class supplied Michigan with a Secre- 
tary of State, and Connecticut with a Lieutenant- 
Governor. 

There was some literary facility among the 
students, as was shown by the publication of a 
few numbers of a college magazine with this title, 
characteristic of juvenile pedantry: The Herm- 



46 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

athenicm. I regarded it as a wonderful per- 
formance, and would have gladly contributed to 
it had I'deemed myself capable. There was one 
of the migratory teacher-students who had writ- 
ten the prize story for a country newspaper, upon 
whom I looked with great admiration as undoubt- 
edly the genius of the college, and likely in fut- 
ure times to rival in reputation Scott and Coop- 
er. I have forgotten his name. Such, alas, is 
fame ! 

The societies, with their weekly debates and 
essays, kept alive a certain interest among us all, 
in the literary, social, and political topics of the 
day; and their libraries as well as those of the 
college supplied us abundantly with books, of 
which I continued to be, as I had always been, a 
great but miscellaneous and indiscriminate read- 
er. Besides the college library there was in the 
same room or hall, covering one whole side of it, 
a large collection of volumes, to which additions 
were being constantly made by the frequent ar- 
rivals of great foreign-looking cases crammed full 
of books, directed to Professor Samuel Farmar 
Jarvis. This personage, though his name was 
very familiar to us all — for it had always for many 
years headed the list of the Faculty in the annu- 
al catalogue — was, like a good many of his sham 
colleagues, no more a reality to iis than Mrs. 



FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 47 

Gamp's shadowy friend, Mrs. 'Arris. Ho was 
nominally a professor of Ecclesiastical Polity, or 
something of that sort ; and I question, as he had 
been for a very long time living in Europe, wheth- 
er he had ever seen the college, or even thought 
of it but as a convenient place where to send his 
books, and thus avoid the payment of Custom- 
house dues and the expense of storage. It was 
expressly stated that the collection belonged to 
Samuel Farmar Jarvis, D.D., LL.D., S.T.D., etc., 
Professor of Ecclesiastical Polity, etc., etc., to 
give him his full title as set down in the college 
catalogue, and was reserved for his exclusive use, 
while every student was w^arned off from touch- 
ing a single book. The shelves, however, remain- 
ing quite open, and the librarian, a short-sighted, 
blinking tutor, who could not see further than 
his nose, being the only one to guard them, the 
students finding some of the works of a tempt- 
ing kind, with, moreover, the additional attrac- 
tion of being forbidden fruit, helped themselves 
without scruple. I, while admiring the good- 
taste of the owner for not confining his selection 
to theology, availed myself freely of the choice 
miscellaneous literature I found on his shelves, 
and carried off, I recollect, at different times, all 
the works of Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, as 
well as of other authors. I must do myself the 



48 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

justice to state, however, that I never failed to 
take good care of every vohirae, and scrupulously 
to return it ; but I fear, with some, what was in- 
tended only as temporary appropriation, became 
permanent larceny. Among the collection was 
a copy of the first edition of " Junius," with cor- 
rections in the handwriting of the author, as was 
stated on a fly-leaf of the volume. This would 
have been, to any investigator of the authorship 
of the work, of immense value; and I recollect 
having carried off the priceless volume, and kept 
it lying about my room in my careless possession 
for several weeks ; but I can honestly affirm that 
it was finally replaced by me on the same shelf 
whence I had taken it. 

There seemed to be a sufficiency of miscella- 
neous talent among the students for every occa- 
sion of college requirement, and the annual jun- 
ior exhibitions and commencements were never 
without their traditional comedy and poems of 
the usual merit, or rather want of merit, of such 
eifusions. At the end of the year it was cus- 
tomary for the students to get up a mock exhibi- 
tion, when the recognized wag of the class was 
generally selected to deliver a humorous valedic- 
tory. On one of these occasions, when all were 
assembled in great expectation of an evening's 
entertainment — for the chosen speaker was cred- 



A SHORT VALEDICTORY. 49 

ited with an unusual endowment of the vis comi- 
ca — he, after having demurely presented himself 
and bowed to the audience, said, "Good-bye, fel- 
Iow^s !" and disappeared. 

4 



50 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER ly. 

The Faculty. — The Sham Professors. — The Real Teachers. 
— Sleepy David. — Old Caloric. — The President. — Higli 
Jinks. — A Change. — The New President. — Holland. — 
Professor Jim. — Habits of Exercise. — Vacations. — Chol- 
era in New York.~A Speech of Henry Clay. — Governor 
Ellsworth. — Isaac Toucey. — Gideon Welles. — Hunger- 
ford, the Lawyer. 

Though our Faculty was nominally large and 
imposing, it was in reality very small and insig- 
nificant. The names of many highly-titled Rev- 
erends, and Right Reverends, and Honorables, 
and Chief-justices, and Governors — with all the 
alphabetical letters our colleges and universities 
distribute so profusely, attached — figured as those 
of professors of impossible sciences and unheard- 
of branches of learning, in the circulars and an- 
nual catalogues. They themselves, granting their 
existence, which might not unreasonably be doubt- 
ed, never showed their faces, to my knowledge, 
within the precincts of the college, or evinced 
the least interest in what was going on there. 
The teaching devolved upon two or three quasi 



SLEEPY DAVID. 51 

professors or tutors, wlio were supposed to give 
instruction in Greek, Latin, matheinatics, chem- 
istry, and philosophy — tlie only branches taught. 
Our instructors were mostly young clergymen, 
who had sought their tutorships and professor- 
ships merely as resting-places, on their way to 
something better which they were hopeful might 
turn up. They were perpetually shifting, so that 
it was seldom that the Faculty remained the same 
for two consecutive sessions. 

The professors seemed to me in the recitations 
as if they only had an hour's start of the pupils, 
who were, evidently, always pressing close upon 
their heels. Some were absurdly unfit for their 
places. There was one I particularly remember ; 
we used to call him " Sleepy David ;" I am sorry 
that I have forgotten his real name, for I should 
have liked to pillory and expose him here to the 
scorn of all honest teachers and lovers of sound 
education. He undertook to teach us geometry, 
and, of course, at the end of the session we knew 
no more of it than at the beginning. As, how- 
ever, there was to be a public examination, we 
became anxious as to the possible consequences 
of our ignorance ; so we went in a body, every 
one of the class without a single exception, and 
audaciously declared to the professor, or tutor, 
or whatever he was — to " Sleepy David," as we 



52 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

termed him — that he must tell us in advance the 
proposition he would call upon each of us to dem- 
onstrate, and he did so! 

One professor, a retired physician and a man 
of fortune, lived during the summer in a hand- 
some country residence near the college, and, as 
a pleasant distraction to him in his leisure, un- 
dertook to teach chemistry to the students. We 
called him " Old Caloric ;" for, take what time 
he would, he resolutely stuck to that elementary 
branch of the science, leaving us to suspect, and 
justly, I firmly believe, that he dared not vent- 
ure farther, for fear of getting out of his depth. 
His services, however, were said to be gratuitous, 
and, upon such cheap terms, perhaps we got as 
much as we were entitled to, and should have 
been grateful for being allowed to flounder about 
in the shallows without expecting the privilege 
of diving into the profundities of science. 

The president, the Right Rev. Dr. Brownell, 
Bishop of Connecticut, was a venerable, amiable 
man, who performed his collegiate duties in a 
very perfunctory manner. Contenting himself 
with a good-natured smile to every student he 
met, and an occasional homily on some general 
moral obligation, delivered in his peculiarly bland 
manner from the chapel rostrum or pulpit, he 
left the rest to his incompetent subordinates, who 



HIGH JINKS. 53 

were equally remiss in fulfilling their duties as 
guardians and teachers. 

There was some pretence of visiting the stu- 
dents' rooms every evening; but this show of su- 
}3ervision did not hinder us from absenting our- 
selves with impunity whenever we pleased, and 
we frequented at will each other's apartments or 
sallied out into the town at any hour of the day 
or night. We were left undisturbed in our high 
jinks, both inside and outside of the college walls. 
We had our frequent symposiums in our rooms, 
eating and drinking to any excess without much 
fear of check, and I attribute much of my own 
subsequent ill-health to these irregular indul- 
gences. We were eating doughy mince and ap- 
ple pies, and washing them down with cggnog 
and punch, which we mixed in our wash-basins, 
stirred with the handles of our tooth-brushes, 
and drank out of our soap-boats, during the night 
and throuojhout the small hours of the morninfr, 
when we should have been fast asleep in our 
beds. If not in our college rooms, we were prob- 
ably in the town taverns and confectionaries, do- 
ing worse. 

There was some improvement in the discipline 
and teaching on the appointment of the Rev. 
Dr. Wheaton as president, in the place of Bishop 
Brownell, and of William Holland as professor of 



54 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

the Latin and Greek languages. The new presi- 
dent was a prim Puritanical-looking person, of a 
severe countenance and resolute conduct, but he 
wanted tact, and could not reform without dis- 
organizing. 

Holland, the new professor, had been a tutor 
in Yale College, and had a greater mastery over 
the subjects he pretended to teach than some of 
his predecessors, but his heart was not fiilly in his 
business, and he preferred the political forum to 
the groves of Academus. He often made speeches 
at the democratic town-meetings, and so identi- 
fied himself with the cause of Van Buren, when 
nominated for President of the United States, as 
to write a popular and flattering biography of 
him, and travel about the country on an election- 
eering tour, commending him to the suffrage of 
the people. He, after leaving the college, settled 
in New York as a lawyer, but died before he was 
able to accomplish much, either in his profession 
or political life. 

There was one member of the Faculty, perhaps 
the most notable one of the whole set, who is en- 
titled to a remembrance. He, too, like the rest, 
performed his vocations in rather a perfunctory 
manner, but he was a faithful fellow withal, and 
stuck more closely to his duties than any of the 
others. He had been at least constant to his 



PROFESSOR JIM. 55 

profession, for he had served the college ever 
since its establishment. This was " Professor 
Jim" — as we called him — our negro janitor, 
whose special duty it was to sweep out daily some 
thirty rooms, and make at least sixty beds, which 
he undertook to do and did in a manner. Though 
he, probably from necessity, was somewhat re- 
miss in the performance of his duties, he nega- 
tively was of considerable benefit to us all ; for, 
what he neglected to do, we were forced to do 
for ourselves, and thus became by compulsion 
practically useful and self-reliant. We made our 
own fires, cleaned our own shoes, brought up our 
own water, and got rid, in some way or other, 
of our own slops. Many of us, besides, sawed 
our own wood, and carried it up into our rooms. 
Professor Jim had a history, which he was fond 
of relating. He had been a sailor on board the 
Shannon during the famous fight with the Ches- 
apeake, having been impressed into the service 
of the English Navy, and thus may be regarded 
as having shared in the honor of causing that 
little war of 1812, of which we are so patriotical- 
ly proud. He used to assure us that, on the ap- 
proach of the engagement between Lawrence and 
Brook, he had been caught in the act of spiking 
the cannon of the Shannon, and kept in irons 
during the famous fight. He died a few years 



56 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

since, at a very advanced age ; and it is pleasant 
to know that his last days were consoled and 
comforted with a pension — a liberal one, it is 
hoped — from the college. 

The students were not very enterprising in ex- 
ploration of the country around Hartford. We 
took no long walks, or, in fact, systematic bodily 
exercise of any kind. We played no out-door 
games, regarding cricket and foot and base ball, 
and other such invigorating pastimes, as quite 
below the dignity of collegiate students. In sum- 
mer, however, some of the younger and more ad- 
venturous swam both the " Little " and Connecti- 
cut rivers, and in winter skated upon them. None 
but myself and fellow-proprietor of our little skiff 
ever thought of taking a spirt at rowing. We 
occasionally, however, took a drive to Wads- 
worth's Tower, some ten miles from Hartford, 
or a sleigh-ride en masse to Wethersfield, famous 
for its onions, its pretty girls, and delicious "flip." 
I was an occasional companion in a drive of an 
old New York friend, who had entered the col- 
lege at my earnest solicitation, for which I hope 
he may have forgiven me. He was no more dis- 
posed to study at Hartford than he had been at 
the Grammar-school in Murray Street, and pass- 
ed the whole week doinoi; nothino- but exercisins: 
his patience in waiting for the coming round of 



A SAD VACATION. 57 

the Saturday, when, loaded with his gun and fish- 
ing-rod, he used to set off in a buggy for Wind- 
sor. I do not recollect that he ever, when I ac- 
companied him, filled his creel or shooting-bng, 
but I shall never forget the savory trout and 
plump quails -with which the sporting host of 
the Windsor Hotel used to regale us at table, 
and more than compensate us for our own ill- 
luck in the brook and the woods. 

During the whole four years I was at college, 
I never failed to spend each of the three annual 
vacations at home ; and sometimes in the winter 
I have gone the whole way from Hartford to 
New York in an open sleigh, when the snow and 
snow-drifts made the roads impassable for the 
Boston mail-coach or stage, which was the usual 
means of conveyance by land. 

It w^as during a summer vacation (1832) that 
the cholera in New York was at its height. I 
went home even then, but gradually, as it were, 
stopping on the route at Greenfield Farms, where 
some friends had fled for refuge. I recollect, as 
I presented myself among the group, how each 
one, thinking that I might have come from some 
infected district, shrunk back and withheld his 
hand; while an old gentleman, whom I knew ^vell, 
fairly turned his back upon me and took to his 
heels, ramming, at the same time, great fingers- 



58 ' MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

ful of snuff into his nostrils. I did not stay long 
at Greenfield Farms, but soon went, in spite of 
the cholera, to New York, where I remained with 
my family during the whole summer. We lived 
on a diet and regimen that were supposed suita- 
ble for warding off any attack of the pestilence. 
We ate no fruit or vegetables of any kind, not 
even potatoes, and drank regularly at our dinners 
pretty strong potations of port-wine and water. 
We all escaped without even a premonitory symp- 
tom of the cholera. I have never spent, however, 
a more terrible time — one more " full with hor- 
rors " — for each moment of the day we were re- 
minded of the dreadful pestilence which was rav- 
aging the city in which we dwelt. There was 
no other topic of conversation in-doors and out. 
The daily number of attacks and deaths, of which 
there were printed slips issued from the newspa- 
per offices, was reiterated by every one we met, 
with probably a supplementary account, with all 
the sickening details of some specially sudden 
case of horror, of jDrivate experience. There was 
hardly a person who had not his story to tell of 
this friend or that neighbor who had died — one 
after eating a peach, another after eating a pota- 
to, or some article of food deemed generally not 
only innocuous but most wholesome. It was 
the last thing the poor victim ate which was 



HENRY CLAY. 59 

always regarded as the teterrima causa of his 
death. 

We had occasional visits at the college from 
the presidents and other great men on their 
periodical tours over the country. Henry Clay 
was received by the whole body of the students, 
headed by college president and professors, and, 
being addressed by one of them, responded in a 
speech. I cannot recall what he said on that oc- 
casion ; but, during the same visit, when I heard 
him address the citizens of Hartford, I can re- 
member the conclusion of his speech, which was 
singularly inappropriate, I thought, to his sober- 
sided New England audience: "I did not," he 
said, " come here to be treated with any form or 
ceremony, but to see you as friends ; in a word, 
to take a drink andacheio of tobacco with youP'' 
This might have been a welcome peroration to a 
throng of his jolly constituents assembled about a 
Western tavern, where the deed would, no doubt, 
have quickly followed upon the word; but it was 
like a sudden dash of cold water into the faces 
of his Puritanical friends of the East, after the 
soul-stirring orator had first warmed them into 
sympathy with his genial eloquence. 

The students visited occasionally in Hartford, 
and I became more or less familiar with some 
of the notabilities of the place. There was Ells- 



60 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

worth, the Governor of the State, a tall, broad- 
shouldered, simply attired, and dignified-looking 
man, who received a salary of only one thousand 
dollars a year, and lived upon it— -his daugh- 
ters serving at his table and doing other homely 
household duties, as was customary in those 
days in the best New England families, when 
women contrived to be useful without a tarnish 
to their refinement. 

The governors of Connecticut used to wear a 
small black cockade on the side of their beaver 
hats, near the top, like the cockades worn by Eu- 
ropean footmen. I have not seen any governor 
for many a year, and I wonder whether they wear 
cockades, and live on one thousand dollars per 
annum, nowadays ! 

I saw Isaac Toucey often, subsequently Secre- 
tary of the Navy, under Pierce. He was a statu- 
esque-looking man, with a great projecting fore- 
head, as square, smooth, and white as a block of 
marble. He, either if walking or rather stalking, 
or standing, bore himself as stiff and erect as a 
column of the State House, and when he spoke, 
his sentences were uttered with the slowness and 
emphasis of not-to-be-questioned oracles. It was 
edifying to us young folks to behold so dignified 
a personage regularly in his place in the Episco- 
pal Church where we attended, and to see him 



NOTABILITIES. 61 

humbly soliciting, Avitli the plate in his hand, at 
each pew -door the alms of the charitable; for 
he was one of the wardens or vestrymen, whose 
duty it was to make the collection. 

Gideon Welles, the editor of the Hartford 
Times, and at one time Secretary of the Navy, 
was a slouchy man with a shock head of hair, as 
full and scattered as the twirling mop of a serv- 
ing-raaid. 

Hungerford, the leading lawyer of Hartford, a 
really able and eloquent man, had a peculiarity 
that no one who ever observed it could easily 
forget. As soon as he began to speak, his nose 
would begin to wrinkle, the movement increas- 
ing, and the furrows deepening more and more, 
as he warmed in his discourse. I never noticed 
a habit of more ludicrous effect. 



62 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER V. 

Graduation. — An old Diploma. — Its Suggestions. — Choice 
of Profession. — The Bells and Mason Good's Works. — 
Enter University of Pennsylvania. — Professor Horner. — 
The Mysteries and Horrors of Dissecting-room. — Dr. Hare. 
— Chemical Displays. — Surgery at Blocksley Hospital. 
— Professor Gibson. — Other Professors. — Doctors made 
Easy. — Passage to Liverpool. — A Jolly Voyage. — Dr. 
Hawks. — Arrival in Liverpool. — Departure for Edinburgh. 

On the 6th of August, 1835,1 spoke my com- 
mencement speech on the text, Ingenuas artes 
didicisse, emollit mores nee sinit esset feros, not 
that I knew much theoretically or practically of 
the influence of the arts, for I believe that I was 
as insensible of their refining effects as a Zulu 
warrior. I then received my degree of B.A. 
(bachelor of arts). I have the diploma before 
me at this moment. The parchment has turned 
yellow with age, but the view of the college at 
the top is clearly discernible, with the projected 
wing, that was never built, added, to give com- 
pleteness to the picture, but which to me is only 
a symbol of the sham establishment whose pre- 
tensions were always in advance of its perform- 



LEAVING COLLEGE. 63 

ances. The seal has melted into a shapeless mass 
of red wax, with not a line of the original stamp 
left; while the once bright blue ribbon to which 
it is attached has lost all its original color, and 
faded to a dingy white. These, too, may be sym- 
bolical, and serve to remind me of the effects 
of time and age, the obliterated impressions and 
vanished hopes of youth. I have had the bit of 
parchment for nearly half a century, but I know 
not why I have kept it, for I have never looked 
at it during those many years until now, and it 
has never been of any other use than to point 
the sentences I have just written. 

I left the college, for it was no alma mater or 
benign mother to me, without a regretful feeling 
or reverential remembrance. I would have glad- 
ly dropped a veil of oblivion over those impor- 
tant but wasted four years. I do not wholly 
blame myself; for I was eager for knowledge 
and amenable to discipline, and I am sure that, if 
those whose duty it was to guide and govern me 
had better fulfilled their obligations,! should have 
been less recreant to mine. Washington is now 
Trinity College, and, with its fresh baptism, it is 
hoped that it has been inspired with a new and 
better life — it could not be worse. 

Before leaving college, I had taken a fancy — I 
can hardly call it by so strong a term as a reso- 



64 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

liition — to become a physician. I do not know 
that I had any peculiar fitness or even a taste for 
the profession, but I was not any better adapted 
or more inclined for the bar or the pulpit, and I 
had to make a choice of one of the three. The 
motive which induced me, I think, to settle on 
the medical profession was the no more serious 
one than that my last chum in college had se- 
lected it, and I thought it would be pleasant to 
continue my companionship with him as a fel- 
low-student in our new studies. He was going 
to the Medical School of the University of Penn- 
sylvania at Philadelphia, and it was arranged that 
I should join him there on the opening of the 
session in ISTovember. 

I do not recollect very well how I spent the 
interval of three months. I may have been for 
some time in the country, and, no doubt, I read a 
good deal in my usual desultory way. With the 
kindly intention of giving me a foretaste of my 
medical studies, some of my friends had provided 
me with copies of the "Anatomy," by John and 
Charles Bell, the two celebrated Edinburgh sur- 
geons, and of the " Study of Medicine," by John 
Mason Good. I could not have had two works 
better calculated to enamor me with the profes- 
sion I had resolved upon pursuing. Medical sci- 
ence has brought to life and buried whole libra- 



UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 65 

ries of text-books since tliose clays; but the vol- 
umes of the Bells aucl Good, though they may 
now be scorned as guides, have never lost their 
literary interest, and will always be welcomed as 
the most charming companions for a leisure hour. 

My friend and'fellow-student had selected his 
lodgings in Philadelphia before I arrived, and I 
felt bound, out of good comradeship, to join him ; 
but they were in a boarding-house, cheap even 
for those times — three dollars a week — and the 
style of living, as well as the company, was so 
little to my liking, that I felt uneasy during the 
whole time of my stay. 

I attended all the lectures pretty regularly, but 
gave my chief attention to those on anatomy and 
chemistry. Professor Horner was a clear dem- 
onstrator, though little else, and under him I ac- 
quired a fair elementary knowledge of anatomy; 
and by the daily sight of the dead subject on his 
table, and the occasional dissection of "a part" 
by myself, became so familiarized with these pro- 
fessional horrors as greatly to overcome my first 
natural repugnance. 

Tlie dissecting-room was only accessible at 
night, and those who were allowed to frequent it 
were enjoined to keep the fact a secret from all 
but the initiated. This may have been necessa- 
ry; for the laws of Pennsylvania either did not 

5 



66 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

recognize as legal the dissection of the human 
body, or public opinion was so opposed to it that 
it was not safe to practise it openly. This secre- 
cy, and the precautions which were taken to pre- 
serve it, the nightly visitation, the whispered com- 
munications between the knowing ones, and the 
guarded silence to all others, cast over the whole 
business such an air of mystery, and made it so 
much a deed of darkness, that I never went to 
this simple performance of my duty without feel- 
ing somewhat as must feel the assassin going 
in the night with stealthy steps to his act of 
murder. 

Dr. Hare, the Professor of Chemistry, amused 
me, as he did every one else, with his various fire- 
works, his flashy and explosive displays of elec- 
tricity, and his exhibitions of the eccentric effects 
of the gases, oxygen, and protoxide of nitrogen, 
upon himself and some of the more adventurous 
students, but he succeeded in teaching very little 
of the principles of his science to any of us. 

At Blocksley Hospital, Dr. Gibson, the Profes- 
sor of Surgery, showed us each week bloody work 
enough to have quickly familiarized the most in- 
experienced ; but I could never witness his bru- 
tality without a severe shock to my feelings, and 
he hardly ever lectured without sending away 
from the amphitheatre several students in faint- 



A SURGICAL PROFESSOR. 67 

iiig fits. Many of his exhibitions were unneces- 
sarily demonstrative ; for he seemed to take a 
great dehglit in accumulating as large a number 
of horrible cases as he could, and displaying them 
in public without regard to the feelings of the 
poor sufferers or the sympathy of the pitying 
spectators. He at one time, I recollect, ordered 
all the patients — and there must have been nearly 
fifty of them in the hospital — affected with chorea., 
or St.Vitus's dance, to be brought together into 
the pit of the amphitheatre, for no other purpose, 
apparently, than to exhibit the eccentric move- 
ments of the poor creatures thus afflicted. To 
me it was one of the most painful scenes I ever 
Avitnessed ; for I could not but think how much 
the sad consciousness to each of his dreadful 
malady must be increased by witnessing its hor- 
rid distortions and convulsive movements in the 
others, and how greatly intensified the sense of 
an affliction thus made manifest to the gaze of a 
crowd of gaping spectators. 

Professor Gibson was a sturdy man, with a 
stout muscular arm, short cropped iron-gray hair, 
a hard aquiline nose, and cold blue eyes. He 
was always equipped, when about to operate, in 
a sort of butcher's apron and sleeves of a black 
water, or, rather, blood-proof cloth. He prided 
himself, and justly — for it was a great operation 



68 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

— on a successful performance of the Csesarean 
section, where both the woman and the child who 

" Was from his mother's womb 
Untimely ripp'd," 

survived. The professor must have been in his 
element during this heroic operation — up to his 
elbows in blood ! 

Of the rest of the Faculty I know but little. 
Wood, the Professor of Materia Medica, the joint 
author with Bache of the standard " United States 
Dispensatory," had the peculiarity of being with- 
out a single natural hair on any part of his body. 
He, however, by the aid of a flowing wig and 
well-designed artificial eyebrows, made, with his 
pale sculptured face and tall dignified person, 
one of the most presentable members of the 
whole professorial corps. Chapman, the Profes- 
sor of the Practice of Medicine, was a great far- 
cem% and cared much more to amuse than instruct 
his class. Jackson, the Professor of Physiology, 
speculating instead of experimenting, went on, 
session after session, mystifying himself more 
and more, and becoming less and less intelligible 
to ns. I, for one, confess that I never could un- 
derstand a word he said. Hodges, the Professor 
of Midwifery, was an earnest, conscientious man, 
who did his best to cram all that was known of 



MURDEROUS IGNORANCE. 69 

his science into tlie crania of three hmulrecl raw 
students in the space of four months, but it was 
shishing work. 

Eight months of study in all, or two sessions 
of four months each, were required for admission 
to the examination for a degree. No prelimina- 
ry education of any kind was necessary, and hun- 
dreds of young men without the least knowledge 
of Latin and Greek, and to whom, consequently, 
each technical word of the sciences they professed 
to learn and master must have remained a per- 
petual puzzle, and with hardly any other acquire- 
ment beyond a superficial acquaintance with the 
elements of learning, were — after listening for 
eight months to the various courses of lectures 
which they could not possibly understand, even 
if they had time enough — annually authorized 
by the University of Pennsylvania to practise as 
physicians, to whose murderous ignorance any 
one might fall a victim. 

It was understood that, on my leaving Phila- 
delphia at the end of the first term, I was to go 
to Edinburgh, in Scotland, for the completion of 
my medical studies. I do not recollect how or 
with whom the idea originated, but I gladly wel- 
comed the prospect, as most young men of my 
age naturally would, of a change, and the oppor- 
tunity of travel into foreign lands. 



70 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

I, accordingly, set sail for Liverpool in the 
packet-ship St. Andrew, Captain William Thomp- 
son, in the spring of 1836. It was probably ear- 
ly in the month of May, but I cannot recall the 
exact date. The captain, an Irishman of good 
family and education, was a great favorite with 
his countrymen of the North of Ireland, of whom 
there was a considerable number in New York, 
in the enjoyment of wealth and high social posi- 
tion. Several of these with whom he was very 
intimate were our fellow-passengers, and the cap- 
tain regarded them very much in the light of his 
guests ; and, entertaining them accordingly, they 
and we were regaled right royally. The poop 
hung with saddles of venison, fat turkeys, canvas- 
back ducks, plump fowls, and succulent game of 
all kinds, and, festooned with gigantic bunches of 
celery, gave us, as soon as we stepped on board, 
a promise of dainty abundance, which was ful- 
filled most sumptuously on each day to the last 
of the three weeks' voyage. In those times the 
large sum of forty guineas, or two hundred dol- 
lars, was paid for a passage. This included a 
daily supply of wine — port, sherry, and madeira 
at discretion, and champagne twice or three times 
a week. With this gratuitous flow of drinkables, 
the more convivial habits of those days, and the 
greater length of the voyages by sailing vessels, 



ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. 71 

a passage across the Atlantic in a first-class pack- 
et-ship, particularly under the circumstances of a 
company of intimate friends, and those a set of 
merry Irishmen, in charge of the captain, was 
sure to be a continued jollification. We all be- 
came intimately acquainted, and each dinner was 
prolonged into a session like that of a club of 
merry fellows, where the bottle circulated, and 
the speech, the song, and the quips and cranks 
went round until a late hour of the night. 

Dr. Hawks, of New York, who was a passen- 
ger, was a great favorite with every one on board ; 
and the services he read, and the short, simple 
addresses he delivered from the capstan-head on 
the Sunday, were as well appreciated by all, from 
captain to Ducks, as his more elaborate discourses 
from the pulpit of St. Thomas had been by its 
imposing crowds. 

The doctor, moreover, in our less serious mo- 
ments, was the most cheerful of companions, tak- 
ing part readily in the drolleries of the occasion, 
whatever they might be. He performed, I rec- 
ollect, the part of judge in a burlesque court, on 
the trial of one of the passengers for having sur- 
reptitiously taken, and disposed of by eating, the 
remains of a Stilton cheese. He showed infinite 
humor in his grave affectation of gravity, and 
every word of his charge was followed by peals 



V2 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

of laughter, not only from jury and counsel but 
even from the prisoner himself. From Liver- 
pool, where we arrived after a passage of from 
eighteen to twenty-one days or so, I proceeded 
to Edinburgh. 

Although the first of the railways^ — the Liver- 
pool and Manchester — had been for some time in 
regular operation, and the whole of England was 
in course of being cut up to make way for oth- 
ers, I then had no clioice in going to Edinburgh 
but between a long and tedious ride of days and 
nights by stage-coach and a sea-voyage. I chose 
the latter, taking the steamer from Liverpool to 
Glasgow, and the mail thence to Edinburgh. 



ARRIVAL IN EDINBURGH. 73 



CHAPTER VI. 

Arrival in Edinburgh. — The Summer Session at the Univer- 
sity. — My First Quarters. — A Disorderly Household. — 
Historical, Romantic, and Personal Associations. — The 
High Street of Edinburgh.— The Little Chapel.— Alison 
on "Taste." — Mackay the Actor. — Holy rood Palace. — 
Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crag. — Heriot's Hospital. — 
The Meadows. — The Links and Golfers. — Convent. — The 
Site of the College.— Murder of Darnley. — The Univers- 
ity and its Associations. 

I ARRIVED ill Edinburgh in time to attend the 
summer session (1836), during which the profes- 
sor of botany delivered a course of lectures, and 
the various private schools of anatomy and chem- 
istry were open. Attendance at the university 
during tlie summer sessions was not obligatory, 
and there were, consequently, but few students 
in comparison with the large number in winter. 
The university building was closed ; but the pro- 
fessor of botany delivered his course of lectures 
at the beautiful botanical garden situated in the 
suburbs, at the opposite extremity of the city. 
Having duly matriculated, I took the "ticket" 
for this course, and at the same time became a 



74 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

student of the private anatomical school taught 
by Dr. Sharpey, afterward the eminent professor 
of the University of London. 

I was commended to a Dr. Y , who agreed 

to give me board and lodging, and such contin- 
gent advantages as a youthful medical student 
could derive from his professional practice, for 
sixty pounds a year. The doctor was what is 
called a general practitioner — a plain, practical 
man, with no pretensions whatsoever to scientific 
or general culture. His business was among the 
small tradesmen and mechanics, of whom there 
were many in the neighborhood of George's 
Square, where he lived. His patients, though 
generally of the humbler classes, were numerous 
and remunerative enough to justify him in keep- 
,ing a horse and gig, or drosky, rather, as it was 
always called, and to enable him to support his 
large family plainly but in tolerable comfort. 
His household was conducted on the strictest 
principles of economy, and his table was neither 
liberally supplied nor elegantly served. There 
was always, however, a fair allowance of parritch 
and pease-brose, baps, broth, and caller baddies, 
those peculiar Scotch dainties with which I then 
became first and fully acquainted, though only 
by dint of hard scrambling for them with my 
numerous hungry competitors of the Y fam- 



THE ROMANCE OF EDINBURGH. 75 

ily. The house was in a continual state of dis- 
order, the chief elements of which were a squall- 
ing baby, a tumbling child, pugnacious brothers 
and sisters, a scolding mistress, and a grumbling 
servant-maid. I made my escape in the course 
of a few months. 

In the mean time the summer was spent by 
me agreeably enough, and I found no difficulty in 
disposing of the long days of that Northern lati- 
tude. A few hours of the early morning were 
ample for my lectures and studies ; and I had 
abundant leisure for a thorough investigation of 
every street, nook, and corner of the picturesque 
old city in which I had taken up my abode, and 
all its interesting neighborhood. 

I was sufficiently well-read to appreciate the 
historical, romantic, and personal associations in 
which Edinburgh is so rich. The halo of Sir 
Walter Scott's genius, which was then in its ef- 
fulgence, had thrown such a brightness over the 
old town, that every spot it touched seemed to 
me to have as much of the clearness of reality as 
the most authentic scene of history, and I traced 
the humble steps of Jeannie Deans with the same 
assurance of faith as the stately progress of the 
beautiful Queen Mary. The memories of beau- 
ty, passion, guilt, and suffering were as distinctly 
awakened bv the sisjht of Tolbooth Church and 



TG MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

the Parliament House as by Holy rood Palace 
and the chapel ; and certainly it was no more 
difficult to hear the " piercing shriek" of poor 
Effie Deans among the echoes of the old " close," 
or square, than to see the blood of David Rizzio 
on the stained floor of the royal bedchamber. 

The old town was full of interest to me, and 
day after day I paced its steep and winding 
streets, lingered about its irregular squares, and 
peered into its grimy closes. My favorite walk 
was along the High Street, from the craggy 
heights of the Castle through every turn of its 
tortuous and precipitous course between walls of 
towering and impending structures — whose jag- 
ged outlines and uneven surfaces looked, in the 
deep shade they threw, not unlike the steep and 
rugged banks of some mountain-torrent — down 
to Holyrood Palace and the low and level ex- 
panse of meadow -land which stretches around 
and beyond, and finally rises into those remarka- 
ble eminences, Salisbury Crag and Arthur's Seat. 

Every house and each step of ground have 
their historical or romantic associations so blend- 
ed as to be difficult of distinction ; and as I saun- 
tered along in their contemplation, I seemed to 
be in a confused dream of fact and fiction. I 
must confess, however, that my memory was 
more quick to respond to the gentle hints of fan- 



THE HIGH STREET. 11 

cy than to the bhint reminders of truth. Heed- 
less of all that Scottish history might tell me 
of authentic sieges and defences, I recollect that 
the old Castle only suggested to me the desper- 
ate struggle described by the writer of a romance. 
As I gazed upon the Grassmarket, the steep and 
crooked Bow, the Tolbooth Church, and the Par- 
liament House, I was recurring to the pages of 
Sir Walter Scott's "Heart of Midlothian," and 
not to the annals of Scotland; in my attempts to 
revive the past, and for what I could recollect of 
the Porteous mob and its ill-fated victim, I was 
more indebted to the novelist than historian. In 
fact, I should have probably cared little to look 
upon Bow or Grassmarket, and thought no more 
of Porteous than any other fellow who had been 
strangled by the hangman's noose, if Scott's mag- 
ic touch had not painted scene and character ou 
my memory. 

There w^as one association which required no 
art of the romancer to call to the mind. Trust- 
ing to my senses, I might have well dispensed 
with my recollection of Smollett's graphic ac- 
count in "Humphry Clinker" of the foul habits 
of the denizens of the High Street; for the pass- 
er-by, as of old, was still startled by the cry of 
"gardy loo" {gardezreau),an(\ forced to dodge, 
as best he might, the oft-repeated torrents of filth 



78 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

from the windows of tlie many-storied houses 
impending over his head. 

I left nothing unseen or unvisited. I stared 
again and again at the old Tolbooth Church, 
which, with its grimy walls, heavy square tower, 
and iron-barred gates and windows, seemed to 
me no less sombre than must have been its for- 
mer neighbor, the Tolbooth Jail, in spite of its 
light crown-topped spire, and the merry succes- 
sion of tunes chimed by its bells at the noonday 
hour. I, of course, knew well the little old house 
at the corner, with its projecting upper story, 
and painted effigies of John Knox holding forth 
from his pulpit. I was equally familiar with 
the imposing residence of the regent Murray, 
and every other structure in the street to which 
either history, romance, or tradition had hung a 
tale. 

I went every Sunday to the little English 
chapel in Carubber's Close, on account of its 
nearness to my residence, and was well pleased 
to hear that it was the place where Alison, the 
author of the work on " Taste," had held forth 
in his choice Addisonian style every week half a 
century before, and no less charmed to discover 
that the devout, bald-headed, sturdy little man 
on his knees by my side was Mackay the actor, 
the representative of the Baillie Nicol Jarvie of 



HISTORY AND ROMANCE. 79 

the stage, and the close friend of the autlior of 
" Rob Roy." 

I was often within the deserted courts of Holy- 
rood, and treading in the steps of Darnley and 
his conspirators from the chapel — a lovely ruin, 
reverentially wrapped in ivy — up the few narrow 
winding steps into the bedchamber of Queen 
Mary, where Rizzio was rudely torn from the 
protecting embrace of his royal mistress, and 
slaughtered at her feet. 

From Holyrood I often wandered beyond, past 
Mushat's Cairn, where Jeanie Deans held the 
nocturnal rendezvous Avith her sister's seducer, 
past the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel, close by, 
to which the ready-witted woman pointed, and 
thus secured the escape of her companion from 
arrest, and herself from brutality at the hands 
of the villanous Ratcliffe ; and going around and 
above the cliffs of Salisbury Crag, I would de- 
scend into the green meadows of St. Leonards, 
where I could place, at the caprice of my fan- 
cy, the cottage of the Deans or the croft of the 
Dumbiedykes. 

At other times I would ascend Arthur's Seat, 
which lies crouching like a colossal lion in guar- 
dianship of the city, and from its summit take 
in that unequalled view of city, country, sea, 
and mountains. There was the gray old town, 



80 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

with all its picturesque irregularities of width 
and height; the Pentland and Grampian Hills, 
on which " my father feeds his flock, a frugal 
swain;" the Frith of Forth, and the sea-beaten 
Ailsa Crag; all varying every moment to the 
sight with the shifting hghts and shades of that 
unsettled climate. 

A favorite walk of mine was through the long, 
straight avenues in the " Meadows," passing on 
my way Heriot's Hospital, a beautiful Gothic 
structure, the founder of which is said to be the 
original of King James's goldsmith, in Scott's 
" Fortunes of Nigel," to the pleasant, airy, rolling 
ground of the "Links." Here I would follow for 
hours the earnest golfers, or stand staring at the 
convent close by, where, within its high walls, bar- 
red gates and windows, was immured a full bevy 
of nuns. I wondered how this piece of the oc- 
cult mechanism of the Roman Church could ever 
have been established within the sound of the old 
bells of the Tron, and in out-spoken Presbyterian 
Scotland. 

Turn where I might, both in the old and new 
town, as the ancient and modern parts of the city 
of Edinburgh are called,! had not far to go to 
find places of interest from their association with 
notable personages and events. The site itself 
of the stately structure of the University was 



A LIST OF WORTHIES. 81 

that of the lonely house, the Kirk o' Field, where 
Darnley was left on his sick-bed after a traitor- 
ous kiss by his queen, a few hours before that 
fatal midnight when an awful explosion shook 
the whole city, " and the burghers rushed out 
from the gates to find the house of Kirk o' Field 
destroyed, and Darnley's body dead beside the 
ruins, though ' with no sign of fire on it.' " Both- 
well certainly did the deed ; for he looked upon, 
and directed his servants as they laid the pow- 
der beneath the royal bedchamber; and who can 
doubt that Mary was an accomplice, if not the 
instigator of the crime ? 

To name the great men in science, literature, 
or public affairs who are associated with the his- 
tory of the University, either as teachers or stu- 
dents, would be almost like calling the British 
roll of fame. In the profession of which I was 
a humble student, what a list of worthies from 
CuUen to Thompson ! In science, from Black to 
Christison ! In philosopliy, Reid, Dugald Stew- 
art, Brown, and Sir William Hamilton ! In lit- 
erature, Hume, Robertson, Blair, Goldsmith, Mac- 
kenzie, Jeffrey, Scott, and Wilson ! In theology, 
Chalmers ! In public affairs, Brougham, Mack- 
intosh, Horner, and Lord John Russell ! and a 
host of others in every department of intellect- 
ual pursuit. 

•6 



82 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Contrasts. — Hume's Monument. — Ambrose's. — Scott's and 
Hume's Houses. — Jeffrey at Home and at Court. — Mur- 
chiston. — Hawthornden. — Dr. Chalmers. — Guthrie. — A 
Visit from Dr. Hawks. — His Companion. — Sydney Smith. 
— Surgeon's Square. — Burke and Hare. — Dr. Knox. — 
Allen Thompson^ — "Never Touched the Ground," — Por- 
trait of Knox. — De Quincey and his Daughter. — Macau- 
lay. — Dr. Abercrombie. 

My researches carried rae into strangely op- 
posite places. I was one day meditating among 
the tombs in a church -yard, and on the next 
regaling myself, and making merry in a tavern. 
Now I was contemplating Hume's monument, a 
huge, ugly, round structure of masonry, which 
looked so unlike any of the surrounding Chris- 
tian memorials in the old burial-place on the Cal- 
ton Hill, that I thought it must be a tool-house, 
or anything, in fact, but what it was, until I no- 
ticed the simple inscription : 

DAVID HUME, 
Born 1711; Died 1776. 

"LeaviDg it to posterity to add the rest." 



LORD JEFFREY. 83 

Then I was eating a chop, and drinking a pot 
of "half-and-half " in Ambrose's eating-house — a 
humble establishment enough, up a narrow pas- 
sage-way leading from Princes Street (close by, as 
far as I recollect) to the Register House. Chris- 
topher North, Tickler, and the Shepherd may 
Iiave occasionally met, and eaten a broiled bone, 
and mixed their toddies in one of Ambrose's 
alcoves ; but few, if any, such " Noctes Ambro- 
sianaj" as we read of in Blackicood were passed 
by them in the place. The title was probably 
assumed from the name of the proprietor lend- 
ing itself so happily to the Latin adjective, and 
suggesting the word "Ambrosial," supposed to 
be particularly appropriate as applied to such 
ofod-like feasts of reason and flow of soul. 

I hunted out every house where a distinguish- 
ed man was born or lived, and discovered Sir 
Walter Scott's homes in the old and new towns, 
and the sceptical Hume's residence in St. David's 
Street. I walked out as far as Craig-crook, the 
pretty villa where Jeffrey, with his American 
wife (formerly Miss Wilkes of New York), lived 
an equable and happy existence, and tracked him 
to his seat of justice in the Parliament House. 
Here I often peeped through the green curtain 
which hung before his contracted judicial stall, 
and watched the wondrous little man unravelling, 



84 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

in his quick, impatient way, the tangle of Scotch 
law. His restless person was in a state of per- 
petual movement; his eyes turning here, there, 
and everywhere ; his features in constant play ; 
his forehead rippling in quick successive wrin- 
kles, as if striving to throw off his close-fitting 
judicial wig, which seemed to grasp his diminu- 
tive head painfully, almost down to his eyebrows, 
and with its 2:reat stiff curls of white horse hair 
heavily to oppress him with its weight. His 
arms, too, he was ever moving with an uneasy 
action, thrusting them out, and shaking them, as 
if he would rid himself of the encumbrance of 
his official robe of scarlet, which covered his 
shoulders and hung in loose folds from his neck 
to his wrists. 

Murchiston Castle came often within my ob- 
servation, for it was quite near — a modern Goth- 
ic structure in the suburbs of Edinburgh, the for- 
mer residence of Napier, the inventor of the loga- 
rithms, and the ancestor of the present Lord Na- 
pier and Murchiston, formerly the English minis- 
ter plenipotentiary to the United States. It was 
an unsuccessful attempt at a gentleman's man- 
sion, which had resulted in an ugly jail-like build- 
ing, which was then used as school-house. 

I extended my walk sometimes as far as Haw- 
thornden, a flourishing-looking country-seat with 



THE GREAT PREACHERS. 85 

a park of lordly extent, and an ancient mansion, 
where the poet Drunimond had lived and re- 
ceived Ben Jonson on his memorable visit, when 
he walked the whole way from London. Near 
by was the beautiful ruin of Roslyn Chapel, 
which, of course, I did not fail to inspect. There 
was another fine ruin much nearer Edinburgh — 
Craigmillar — each stone of whose broken arches 
and crumbling walls I was as familiar with as 
the threshold of my own door. 

I went to hear the great preachers. Dr. Chal- 
mers was then professor of the University, and 
had no parish of his own, but occasionally held 
forth at a small church at Liberton, I think it 
was called, in the suburbs of Edinburgh, and here 
I was one of the larcje crowd which thronojed in 
and about the contracted building. Not very 
familiar with the Scotch brogue which Chalmers 
spoke, of the rudest Glasgow kind, and finding 
it not only difficult to understand but painful to 
listen to, I was Httle disposed, at first, to give 
much heed to his sermon. His appearance and 
manner in the pulpit, moreover, were by no means 
attractive. His face and features were coarse 
and large; his lank gray hair fell carelessly about 
a narrow forehead, and he kept his head bent, 
and his blinking eyes close to his manuscript ; 
while his only action was an up and down or 



86 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

sawing movement with bis right arm, from the 
elbow. In spite of all these personal disadvan- 
tages, which, at the beginning, were very repul- 
sive to me, I was soon so interested in his fer- 
vid utterances, and absorbed by the quick alter- 
nations of emotion with which my feelings re- 
sponded to his earnest appeals, that I unresist- 
ingly yielded to the torrent of his eloquence. 
The man, in the mean time, seemed transfigured, 
and my tearful eyes saw, as it were through a 
sacred halo, the prophet or apostle. 

Dr. Guthrie was at Grayfriar's Church,! think, 
and was already, although he had not been long 
in Edinburgh, regarded as one of its notable men. 
It was strange to observe how this tall, gaunt, 
broad-shouldered man, with the physical strength 
of a Hercules, would thrill with emotion as he 
recalled the wretchedness of vice, and suffering 
of poverty, and to what tender accents he toned 
his rude Scotch dialect, as he appealed to the 
sympathy of his listeners. He had, besides, ex- 
ceedingly graphic powers of description; and 
Wilkie, with his brush and colors, could not have 
produced a more distinct and impressive picture 
of the humble life of Scotland than Guthrie, witli 
his fervid words and glowing imagination, did of 
the lowly scenes of his experience in the grimy 
closes and wynds of the old town of Edinburgh. 



AN AMERICAN VISITOR. 87 

My fellow-passenger across the Atlantic, Dr. 
Hawks, in the course of his tour came to Edin- 
burgh, and was glad to avail himself of my guid- 
ance, and complimented me on the fulness of my 
knowledge of the various f)laces and associations 
of interest ill and about the city. He was as 
ready to follow as I was to guide, and as will- 
ing to listen as I to discourse. Not so, however, 
his companion — a reverend gentleman like him- 
self — who was then a prominent clergyman of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York ; 
subsequently a Catholic priest; and now again is, 
or was when last I heard of him, of his original 
creed. He seemed to regard all our talk about 
the old town and its associations as a great bore, 
and it was impossible to get him out of the snug 
parlor of the Royal Hotel, or beyond Princes 
Street or South Bridge, where he passed much 
of his time with his nose flattened against the 
plate-glass of the shop-windows, contemplating, 
in an ecstasy of delight, the brilliancy of their 
displays. He was especially enamored of the 
Scotch stuffs, and bought whole pieces of vel- 
vet, and rolls of ribbon of the plaid of a clan to 
which he professed to belong ; and in whose an- 
nals, traditions, associations, and especially cos- 
tume, his entire interest, as far as Scotland was 
concerned, seemed absorbed. 



88 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

Dr. HawkSj during his stay in London, had met 
Sydney Smith, and brought away with him some 
reminiscences of the talk characteristic of that 
witty divine, which he narrated with humorous 
aj^preciation. I knew Buccleugh Place, in an 
eighth or ninth flat of which Jeffrey once had 
his elevated residence, and where he, Brougham, 
and Sydney Smith, happening to meet, the last 
proposed to set up a Bevieio. This was acceded 
to, although the motto proposed by Smith, I'e- 
nui iniisam meditamur avetid — "We cultivate 
literature on a little oatmeal" — being too near 
the truth, was not admitted. Sydney Smith, as 
a long resident of Edinburgh, and first proposer 
and editor of its famous Hevieio, seems thus as 
much one of the celebrities of the Scotch me- 
tropolis as of London. Reminiscences of him, 
therefore, fall naturally into any description of 
Edinburgh. I wish that I could reproduce the 
words and manner with which Dr. Hawks, in re- 
calling, gave expression to them. Sydney Smith 
asked the Doctor to what extent he thought a 
stranger of good appearance, but of no pecun- 
iary means whatsoever, could get into debt in 
London? He answered tlie question at once 
himself, by estimating the amount at forty thou- 
sand pounds; and went on by describing how 
such a person — a Major Sharper, for example — 



SYDNEY smith's TALK. 89 

might proceed : going to the best hotel on arri- 
val ; renting a handsome house, subsequently, on 
the strength of the respectability of his hotel ; 
obtaining the furniture on the credit of the im- 
posing appearance and genteel position of his 
mansion ; establishing an account with butcher, 
baker, grocer, wine-merchant, fruiterer, and huck- 
sterer without difficulty, on no other basis than 
his flourishing style of living; and so on, using 
one roguery as the foundation for another, until 
finally, after exhausting his own ingenuity of de- 
vice, or the credulity of the tradesmen, making 
his escape from the toppling structure of fraud 
he had raised, and leaving to his creditors the 
debt of forty thousand pounds to be divided ^ro 
rata among them. 

Another subject of the witty dean's conversa- 
tion was the Rev. Dr. Wainwright, subsequently 
the Bishop of New York, who was at that time 
in England. His aspirations to ecclesiastical dis- 
tinction were well known to his intimate acquaint- 
ances in New York; but Sydney Smith — who had 
met him casually, once or twice only, in London 
society — seems with wonderful acuteness to have 
discerned at first sight the ruling desire of the 
ambitious divine, wliich was, in fact, to be a bish- 
op. After dwelling upon the excessive priestly 
unction and manner of Dr. Wainwright, his punc- 



90 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

tilioiis attention to the minutest detail of all the 
varieties of clerical costume, and his fond fre- 
quentation of the society of ecclesiastical digni- 
taries, the witty dean concluded, "And, loould 
you believe it ? it is said (lowering his voice to a 
whisper) that he has been seen trying on a bish- 
op's apron before his looMng-glass P'' Dr. Hawks 
went to hear Sydney Smith preach at St. Paul's, 
but heard Dr. Adam Clarke, the old Bible com- 
mentator, instead ; for it was one of his sermons 
that the clever but not over-scrupulous divine 
delivered as his own. 

Attendance upon Dr. Sharpey's course of Prac- 
tical Anatomy took me daily to Surgeon's Square, 
which opened just opposite to the University, and 
terminated in a cid de sac, within which were 
the Royal Medical Society building, and most of 
the private lecture and dissecting rooms. Among 
these was the hall of Dr. Knox. It was the largest 
in the whole Square, and, but a few years before, 
it daily filled to overflowing ; for the doctor, not 
only as a popular demonstrator but as the pro- 
prietor of a well-supplied dissecting-room, at a 
time when dead bodies for anatomical purposes 
were scarce, commended himself to students from 
every quarter, of whom he had the most numer- 
ous class in Europe. When, however, I first went 
to Edinburgh, Knox, thoug^h he had lost none of 



HORRID MERCHANDISE. 91 

his characteristic energy or skill as a ready 
lecturer and clear demonstrator, held forth to 
almost empty benches, the scattered students 
upon which hardly amounted to the average of 
a score. 

The doctor, notwithstanding, had by no means 
become any less, but, in fact, much more of a 
celebrity. He was far better and wider known 
than ever. His reputation had extended beyond 
the precincts of the colleges to the extremities 
of the civilized world ; and his name was now no 
longer uttered with praise by medical students 
everywhere — who at most were but few — but 
with detestation by all mankind. 

The cause was evident, for Dr. Knox was the 
anatomical lecturer who had received and paid 
for all the dead bodies of those whom Burke 
and Hare and their confederates had murdered ! 
His, flourishing dissecting-room in Surgeon's 
Square was the market whence arose the de- 
mand that created the supply for the horrid 
merchandise, of which those bloody ruffians took 
care that there should be always an abundant 
stock on hand. 

Dr. Allen Thompson, now the eminent Profes- 
sor of Physiology in the University of Glasgow, 
whose acquaintance I made soon after my first 
arrival in Edinburgh — upon the question, which 



92 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

was then a frequent topic of discussion, coming 
up, as to the extent of Dr. Knox's connivance — 
told me that he was his student at the time of 
the murders; and one morning, on entering the 
dissecting-room, Knox met him in an unusually 
gleeful mood, and leading him to a table, threw 
off the sheet and disclosed a fresh body, saying, 
at the same time, with that peculiar puckering 
of the mouth characteristic of him whenever he 
was pleased, like a man gloating over something 
good to eat, "iVeyer toadied the ground! Nev- 
er touched the ground H He thus repeated the 
phrase over and over again, evidently wishing it 
to be well understood by his listener that the 
subject before them was not one of those ordi- 
nary bodies which had been disinterred, as such 
were the only kind usually to be obtained at that 
time ; for, previous to Burke and Hare, no one 
had ventured to murder the living, though there 
were many who were ready to steal the dead, in 
order to supply the dissecting-room with its nec- 
essary material. 

Knox was tried and acquitted of all complici- 
ty ; and his lawyer, whom I knew well, told me 
that he was firmly persuaded that his client was 
guiltless of any connivance whatsoever with the 
dreadful crime of Burke and Hare. Dr. Knox, 
however, remained under a cloud of suspicion 



PORTRAIT OF KNOX. 93 

and obloquy to the end of bis life. Finding his 
school in Edinburgh deserted, he was forced to 
seek a livelihood elsewhere. He passed the re- 
mainder of his days as a literary vagrant — now 
holding forth as an itinerant lecturer, and again 
scribblino^ here and there as a hack writer for 
the publishers and newspaper proprietors. 

Knox was a man of a most viHanous aspect. 
His face was corrugated all over with deep scars 
of the small-pox, and he had a leer or squint of 
one of his eyes which drew up the whole cheek, 
which was further deformed by a puckering of 
the mouth, habitual to him. He had a squat, 
coarse person, the ugliness of which was made 
more noticeable by his vulgar, dressy costume, 
consisting of a shiny silk hat, a green Newmar- 
ket cutaway coat with brass buttons, a full over- 
lapping striped waistcoat, and a flashy red neck- 
erchief. He had the look of a fictitious sporting 
character, such as may be seen enacting the part 
of a decoy at the thimblerig stand on a race- 
course. He was an eager, bustling person, seem- 
ing always on the alert for business. 

I often met De Quincey in my walks, general- 
ly, I recollect, in the open meadow-land near the 
Palace of Holyrood, whicli was included in what 
is known as the " Liberties " or Jail Limits, to 
which the freedom of debtors was restricted. 



94 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

He was a little, meagre, sharp-eyed old man. 
His daughter was his constant companion — a 
ruddy, pretty-faced young woman of about the 
height of her diminutive father. 

I did not know, but I daily saw in the streets 
of Edinburgh, Dr. Abercrombie, the author of the 
once popular books, " Intellectual Powers " and 
"Moral Feelings." His practice as a jDhysician 
was enormous, and, kept him ever on the go. 
His carriage was to be seen at every hour from 
early morning to late at night, as he drove over 
the whole circuit of the city. He was so absorb- 
ed in the practical duties of his profession that 
he had never a moment to spare for any society 
but that of his numerous patients, and he barely 
found time even for the pursuit of his favorite 
studies. Whenever I caught a glimpse of the 
busy doctor, he was poring intently over some 
book, which I never saw him without during the 
many years I was familiar with his person. He 
stood his hard work well, for his full rotund body 
and cheerful, ruddy face were indications of sat- 
isfied ease and happy contentment. 

Macaulay I once saw on the hustings in the 
High Street, and, showing himself in the " nap- 
less vesture of humility" to the people, heard 
him "beg their stinking breaths." I did not 
recognize in him then the great man he after- 



MACAULAY. 95 

ward proved to be; and there was nothing in 
hiis heavy manner and puny voice to tempt me 
to linger among the throng of his dirty and tur- 
bulent supporters, and endure their rough elbow- 
ing and noisome presence. 



96 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

My First Invitation. — A Jolly Dinner. — Edinburgh Conviv- 
iality. — A Surprise. — Religious Topics. — J. Shank More. 
— Edinburgh Society. — A Disputed Child. — Mr. Craig. — 
Bishop Ravenscroft. — From Slave-whip to Crosier. — A 
Change of Quarters. — Mr. Ainslie. — A Friend of Burns. — 
Clarinda. — A Genial Neighbor. — Marriage atThree-score- 
and-ten. — A Festival. — Campbell the Poet in the Chair. — 
Genius in Eclipse. — Professor Blackie in Youtli. 

Having delivered ray letters of introduction, 

I received my first invitation from Mr. F , a 

flourishing wine-merchant, and one of the wealth- 
iest and most influential of the burghers of Ed- 
inburgh. He was then, or had been shortly be- 
fore, the Lord Provost or Mayor of the city. He 
had a handsome villa in Newington, on the out- 
skirts of the old town, showily furnished, where 
he entertained most liberally. His wife was a 
charming, intellectual person — a dark brunette, 
with black piercing eyes, full flowing hair of the 
same color, and the regularly-cut features of a 
handsome Italian, though she was a Scotswoman. 
Her husband was of the extreme opposite type 
—a sandy-haired, blue -eyed, light- complexioned 



FIRST DINNER IN EDINBURGH. 97 

Scot. Both of them were the most genial, kind- 
hearted people in the world, and to their friend- 
ship and generous hospitality I was indebted for 
many of the pleasantest hours of my stay in 
Edinburgh. 

My first dinner at their house was on the an- 
niversary of their wedding-day. It was a jovial 
occasion. The guests were magnates and offi- 
cials of the town, and, as hearty feeders and deep 
drinkers, sustained the traditional reputation of 
the civic dignitary. I had heard a good deal of 
the convivial habits of the Scotch folk generally, 
and of the old Edinburgh burghers in particular; 
but at the same time I was led to believe that, a 
great reformation having taken place, the gener- 
ation I was among, if not absolutely abstemious, 
was comparatively temperate. If what I wit- 
nessed was temperance, what could have been 
the excess of a former time ? 

After the soup every one, of course, drank off 
his bumper of sherry or madeira; and after the 
fish no one, equally of course, refused his full 
liqueur-glass of raw whiskey; for " whiskey," 
every one exclaimed, as he gulped it down, "is 
Scotch for salmon" — a standing joke of the na- 
tive unfathomable kind. Then began the wine 
" taking," as it was termed, which was continued 
with great briskness throughout the whole din- 



98 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

ner, but greater still during the intervals between 
the courses. The host first pledged the lady on 
his right in a bumper, and then every other lady 
in succession, saying to each, "Mrs.," or "Miss," 
or whatever might be the title, " shall I have the 
pleasure of a glass of wine with you ?" iSText, 
each gentleman, in turn, pledged the hostess, 
repeating the same formula of words, " Shall I 
have," etc. ; then took wine with the ladies on 
each side of him. 

Now the host went thro ug-h with the same 
ceremony with all the gentlemen, who afterward 
repeated it to each other, every one filling his 
glass afresh whenever he asked or was asked to 
take wine. On this set occasion two or three 
bottles of champagne were, in addition, distrib- 
uted by the servants among all the guests. Thus 
a good deal of wine, and strong wine too, was 
drunk during the many and prolonged courses 
of the dinner. 

All this, however, was regarded as purely pre- 
liminary, and so trifling as hardly worthy of com- 
putation in the quantity of wine consumed on 
the occasion. It was only when the table-cloth 
was removed, and the mahogany was left bare, 
that the serious drinking began. Fresh glasses 
by the half-dozen were set before each guest, and 
a row of tall decanters and claret-pitchers, full to 



LIVELY DRINKING. 99 

their stoppers, were arrayed in front of the host, 
who took care to keep tliem in brisk circula- 
tion. 

After one or two rounds the ladies were bow- 
ed out of the room, and the gentlemen set to 
work in earnest. The host, never forgetful of 
his duty as the moving force, was always quick 
to start the decanters and to keep them in brisk 
circulation, by stirring up every dilatory raeaiber 
of the company with the reminder, " Now, Mr. 
Smith, the bottle is with you!" or, " Mr. Jones, 
your glass is empty; fill up, and pass the wine!" 
or, "Brown, my good fellow, your neighbor is 
thirsty; pass the claret, please !" This went on 
for hour after hour, the company in the mean 
time frequently emptying the decanters, which 
were replenished again and again. On this oc- 
casion, in addition to the usual decanters and 
wdne-pitchers, a magnum of port — an immense 
bottle, of the capacity of a gallon — was brought 
in in honor of the wedding anniversary, and be- 
ing soon whirled into the general orbit of the 
smaller satellites of Bacchus, kept revolving un- 
til it too, like them, was lost in vacuity. 

When sherry, pale, brown, and golden ; port, 
old, dry, and crusty; madeira, sweet and mel- 
low ; claret, delicate and full-bodied, failed any 
longer to stimulate the jaded tongue or titillate 



100 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

the palled palate, the whiskey-bottles, the boil- 
ing tea-kettle, the sugar-bowl, the glasses and 
ladles were called for, and the more pungent tod- 
dy again awakened the thirst of the wine-sated 
revellers. 

The door of the dining-room was now lock- 
ed ; and mindful of the stories I had heard of the 
practice of Scotch convivialists, I feared that I 
was destined, in common with my companions, 
to fall, and pass the night under the table. I 
was, however, soon relieved from my alarm when 
our host, opening a compartment in the side- 
board, disclosed to our view an indispensable ar- 
ticle of convenience, ordinarily found nowadays 
shut up in a table de omit, or hidden under a 
bed. It was a welcome sight to the saturated 
company. 

I did not know then how we managed to as- 
scend the many stairs, and face the ladies in the 
drawing - room, after this prolonged debauch- 
ery, so I can hardly be expected to remember 
now. 

However deep in his potations, the Scotchman 
has always a sober thought and word for relig- 
ious matters. The Church, or rather the Kirk, 
always a topic of talk of oppressive prevalence 
to the uninterested stranger in Scotland, was em- 
phatically so at this time, and here at my friend's 



THE AUCHTERADER CASE. 101 

dinner-table, as everywhere else, the Auchterader 
case,* as it was termed, was discussed in all its 
wearisome details. 

Another family to whose intimacy I was free- 
ly admitted was that of J. Shank More, and to 
them and himself I was indebted for many kind 
hospitalities. Mr. More was an eminent advo- 
cate of Edinburgh, and lived, with his wifc^, two 
grown-up sons, and several daughters, in a hand- 
some residence in Great King Street. I met the 
best of company at their house, chiefly the dis- 
tinguished professional men of Edinburgh and 
their families. Dr. Chalmers and other promi- 
nent clergymen of the Established Church of 
Scotland ; an occasional law lord ; a military of- 

* The Auchterader was the crucial case which led to the 
disruption of the Scotch Established Church, and to the sep- 
aration and organization of that important ecclesiastical body 
now known as the Free Church of Scotland. The patron 
of the Auchterader living had, notwithstanding the protest 
of the parishioners, insisted upon forcing the minister of his 
choice upon the parish. Thence arose the cry of non-intru- 
sion, as it was termed, and the appeal to the courts for a re- 
versal of the appointment. After several years of passionate 
discussion, which agitated the religious sentiment of Scotland 
as it had not been since the persecution of the Covenanters, 
the action of the patron was finally confirmed, and the non- 
intrusionists, forming far the larger portion of its lay and 
clerical force, seceded from the Established Church. 



102 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

ficer from the Castle or the barracks ; a goodly 
number of advocates and physicians; a chance 
country " laird and his leddy ;" and now and then 
a merchant or manufacturer from Glasgow, were 
the staple guests at the table of Mr. More, to which 
I was often invited. 

Mr. More, though the son of a dissenting min- 
ister of the most liberal political views, was him- 
self a staunch member of the established Church 
of Scotland, and a confirmed Tory. Such, how- 
ever, was the sweetness of his temper, that it was 
proof against even the bitterness of Edinburgh's 
political partisanship ; and Mr. More was beloved 
alike by Churchman and Dissenter, Whig and 
Tory. It was universally admitted that he was 
destined to fill the first vacancy on the bench in 
the gift of his party whenever it might be in 
power. He, however, never became a law lord, 
but ended his long and honorable career as pro- 
fessor, in the University of Edinburgh, of Scotch 
law — a department of his profession in which he 
was acknowledged to be pre-eminent. 

One of Mr. More's daughters married an Eng- 
lish ofiicer, and went to India with him. She 
soon died there, leaving an only child — a little 
girl of three years of age — who Avas sent to Ed- 
inburgh, and placed under the charge of Mr. and 
Mrs. More. They doted upon the child with 



A STOLEN CHILD. 103 

more than tlie characteristic fondness of grand- 
parents. Mr. More, especially, delighted in pet- 
ting and caressing the little girl, and during his 
rare moments of leisure seemed never contented 
without her companionship. At dinner-time — 
it mattered not who were his guests — he always 
sent for his little "Ailsie," saying, as soon as the 
cloth was removed, " Come, we must have the 
Scotchman's dessert !" and as she came in run- 
ning to his arms, he would snatch her up, give 
her a fond hug and a kiss, and place her upon 
the dining-table, where she was left awiiile tod- 
dling about on the slippery mahogany, to be ad- 
mired by the surrounding guests, while the grand- 
father regarded her with eyes sparkling with 
pride and delight. 

The little girl's father, in the mean time, mar- 
ried again, when a question arose between his 
parents and the Mores as to who should have 
the charge of the child. The Mores would listen 
to no proposition which would deprive them of 
the little Ailsie, to whom they clung with all the 
fibres of their hearts. Her other grand-parents, 
though fortified with the permission of her own 
father, failing to obtain the little girl by any fair 
means, resorted to foul ; and, lying in wait one 
day, with a carriage at hand, snatched her from 
the side of her nurse in the street, and drove off 



104 MY COLLEGE DAYS, 

with her, never to be seen again by the broken- 
hearted Mores. 

There was a gentleman of the name of Craig, 
to whom I was also indebted for many kind- 
nesses. His wife was sister of Ravenscroft, the 
Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina; 
and this close association with the United States 
made him and his family always ready to extend 
a warm welcome to every American, and I re- 
ceived the full benefit in many generous hospi- 
talities of this friendly bias toward my country- 
men. Bishop Ravenscroft was a Scotchman by 
birth, and had wandered away, in his youth, from 
his Presbyterian home in Scotland, carrying with 
him, as a ne'er do loeel, the saddest forebodings 
of his future fate. After many vicissitudes of 
fortune — sinking at one time even so low as to 
wield the whip of a negro -driver or overseer 
over the backs of a gang of crouching slaves — he 
finally bloomed forth in all the sacred fulness of 
Episcopal lawn, as a distinguished prelate of the 
Church. It may be suspected, however, notwith- 
standing his unquestionable eminence as an ec- 
clesiastical dignitary in the United States, that 
his Presbyterian fi'iends in Scotland rather re- 
garded his prelatical elevation as a fulfilment 
of their prophecy of the evil end to which they 
had predestined the unpromising lad. Mr. Craig 



A FRIEND OF BURNS. lOo 

told me that he had found, in the pubhslied col- 
lection of Bishop Ravenscroft's writings, two un- 
acknowledged sermons by divines of repute, but 
whose names I have forgotten. 

Driven away from Dr. Y by the anarchy 

and turbulence of his domestic establishment, I 
was soon comfortably domiciled in snug quar- 
ters in the lodgings in Graham Street, kept by 
a buxom, canny Scotchwoman, of the name of 
Munro. Next door to us lived a very old gen- 
tleman — a Mr. Ainslie. He had been a writer 
to the signet, or solicitor and attorney of some 
mark in his prime ; but his chief distinction came 
from the fact of his having been in his youth an 
intimate friend of Burns, the poet, of whom, no 
doubt, he had a great deal to say, but I can recall 
little of what I heard from him. 

He used, I know, to defend warmly the memo- 
ry of the poet, and declare that the ordinary im- 
pression of his irregular habits was a greatly ex- 
aggerated one, saying that he wixs no worse than 
most young men of his day, and that he had an 
ardent sentiment, as we may well believe, of virtue 
and piety. 

Ainslie himself, in his old age at least, was a 
very religious man. He was the author of a lit- 
tle devotional book, " The Reasons of the Faith 
that is in Us," or some such title — a work which 



106 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

was very popular, and has given much consola- 
tion to pious people of the evangelical sort. 

In all the biographies of Burns, Ainslie's name 
is mentioned ; and some of the letters addressed 
to him by the poet are given, which, as far as I 
recollect, are of a kind which indicate that their 
sympathies were of a more worldly character 
than the pious old gentleman would have had me 
believe. Mr. Ainslie, in the occasional visits he 
received from a Mrs. McLahose, kept up his old 
associations with Burns; for she was one of the 
survivors of the numerous claimants to be a 
Highland Marj'-, or some other bonnie Scotch las- 
sie,* who had the honor of having had in her 
youth the poet for an admirer, and minstrel of 
her heaux yeiix. She was a very old little wom- 
an of more than fourscore years, with an arti- 
ficial front of hair to conceal her baldness, gray 

* Mrs. McLahose was the Clarinda, I believe, to whom 
these verses were addressed: 

"We part — ^but, by those precious drops 
That fill thy lovely eyes ! 
No other light shall guide my steps 
Till thy bright beams arise. 

" She, the fair sun of all her sex, 
Has blessed my glorious day ; 
And shall a glimmering planet fix 
My worship to its ray ?" 



THE POET CAMPBELL IX THE CHAIR. 107 

eyebrows masked in dye, and her once "lovely 
eyes" hid behind a pair of goggles. 

Our landlady made herself a very genial neigh- 
bor to the forlorn old bachelor next door, for he 
had patiently endured his threescore years and 
ten or more in solitude; but at last, before he 
was many months older, he found Mrs. Munro 
and her consoling possets, and other delicate at- 
tentions, irresistible, and married her. I suspect 
that the canny Scotchwoman was prudently alive 
to the fact of Mr. Ainslie's enjoyment of a snug- 
pension from the society of the Writers to the 
Signet of Edinburgh, and of its reversion to his 
widow. 

The old gentleman was fond of keeping np his 
associations with literature and literary men, and 
took every opportunity of taking a part in any 
public manifestation of which they were the 
object. There was a printers' festival of some 
kind, at wdiich Thomas Campbell had promised 
to preside. Mr. Ainslie, who had taken a ticket, 
urged me to take one, too, which I did gladly, 
eager to see the famous poet, and expecting a 
great gathering of all that were notable for gen- 
ius and talent in Edinburgh. 

We went, and found the printers in full force, 
ranged on each side of long wooden tables or 
narrow deal boards on trestles, facing little black 



108 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

bottles of slierry-wine, and plates of " cookies," 
and almonds, and raisins ; for these were all the 
material refreshments we had in exchange for 
our payment of five shillings each. 

There was not a distinguished personage to be 
pointed out to me, much to the disappointment 
of my venerable companion, and especially of my- 
self, until the poet himself came, or rather was 
brought, for he w^as accompanied by two per- 
sons, each of whom seemed to be holding on to 
an arm, and lifting him to his place. As soon as 
his chair on the dais was reached, he sunk down 
in it, and there remained like a log the whole 
evening, giving no heed, apparently, to any per- 
son or thing, except to the black bottles before 
him. He may possibly have made a few inco- 
herent attempts to speak, but there was no intel- 
ligible speech from him ; and, as far as I recol- 
lect, the whole festival collapsed into a free-and- 
easy chat and private pledging of healths, which 
the printers had all to themselves, striving to be 
as merry as they could under the sad constraint 
of the presence of the great genius in his eclipse. 

On the appointment of Dr. Sharpey to a pro- 
fessorship in the London University, I attend- 
ed the anatomical lectures of his successor. Dr. 
Handyside, and was occasionally a guest at his 
house. At an evening party to which he invited 



PROFESSOR BLACKIE IN YOUTH. 109 

me I met Blackie, the present eminent Professor 
of Greek in tlie University of Edinburgh. He 
was then a very young man, just fresh from the 
German Universities. All regarded him as an 
eccentric genius, and he gave us proof at least of 
the odd side of his character. He went striding 
about the room, with his long black hair stream- 
ino^ down to his shoulders, and his arms movinir 
with all sorts of strange gesticulations, bawling 
out German songs, and declaiming German verses. 
As he strode backward and forward, with his lit- 
tle meagre body all in commotion, and his voice 
hoarse with his recitations in a language unintel- 
ligible to any person present, he seemed to be a 
man possessed, and caused, evidently, great con- 
sternation among the ladies, who anxiously drew 
in their skirts, and shrunk behind the gentlemen. 



110 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Winter Session. — Rush of Students. — The Classes. — 
Students from Everywhere. — The Full-blooded Negro.— 

Social Inversion. — Distinguished Students. — W of 

Nottingham. — G of Newcastle. — Charles Maitland. — ■ 

Faith in Chemistry. — Samuel Brown. — Poet and Philoso- 
pher. — Unity of Matter. — Professor Anderson of Glasgow. 

There was an interval, no doubt, between the 
close of the summer and opening of the winter 
session of the University, but I do not recollect 
how long it was, and in what way I passed it. 

With the beginning of the winter or regular 
session of six months, the attendance upon which 
alone was obligatory, there was a great rush of 
students from all parts of the world, but chiefly 
from Scotland. The heavy gates of the Univer- 
sity building were thrown wide open, and through 
them thronged, at every hour of the day, lai'ge 
crowds of youth, filHng the wide quadrangle, be- 
fore so deserted, and, as they rushed in and out 
of the lecture-rooms, making the stone walls echo 
with the hum of their voices and the pattering 
of their feet. The number attending the vari- 
ous departments of study must have been near- 



STUDENT LORDS. Ill 

ly two thousand, of whom seven or eight hundred 
were medical students. 

The " Humanity " classes, as the Greek and 
Latin were termed, were principally composed 
of Scotch youth — mostly a set of rough, rustic, 
shabbily -dressed lads, with the true grit, how- 
ever, of patient perseverance and hardy endur- 
ance of sons of the manse, farm-house, counter 
and shop, from the small towns and rural dis- 
tricts. Among them was a small scattering — ea- 
sily distinguished by a more dapper dress and 
manner — of city -bred scions of landed gentry 
and professional gentlemen. 

The philosophical classes were mainly of the 
same ; though the lingering tradition of the fame 
of old teachers like Reid and Dugald Stewart, 
and the increasing renown of the Professor of 
Logic and Metaphysics, Sir William Hamilton, 
attracted other students from England and vari- 
ous parts of Europe. There were several of the 
English aristocracy among them ; a Lord Al- 
tamont, son of the Marquis of Sligo, and two 
young men of rank of the name of Paget, I can 
only recollect, though, no doubt, there were oth- 
ers. Times, however, had greatly changed since 
those days when no aspiring young English 
statesman — of Whig proclivities, at any rate — 
regarded his preparation for public life complete 



112 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

without a session or so at the University of Ed- 
inburgh; and Lords Dudley and Webb Sey- 
mour, the Horners, and Lord John Russell en- 
rolled themselves as puj^ils of that eloquent and 
suggestive teacher, the refined and philosophical 
Dugald Stewart. 

The medical classes, though still numerously 
attended, had no longer the reputation of the 
days of the two elder Munros and the Gregorys, 
when students came in crowds from the extrem- 
ities of the civihzed world to witness their clear 
and accurate demonstrations, and through their 
convincing deductions learn the truths of the 
healing art. 

There were, however, still among the medical 
students a few from the remote parts of the 
earth. I myself, from distant New York, was a 
proof of the fact that was self-evident; and there 
was another obvious to all — a full-blooded negro 
from St. Domingo. I looked upon him with es- 
pecial wonder, for I had come from a land where 
creatures of his color were regarded as mere 
beasts of burden, to be bought, sold, and ex- 
changed as chattels, and if not incapable of ed- 
ucation, deemed unworthy of it; and to behold 
this coal-black fellow holding up his head as 
high as the best of us — much higher, in fact, than 
most, for he was very proud in his bearing, and 



NEGRO STUDENTS. 113 

self-conscious of his importance, ns the son and 
heir of some Duke of Marmalade, Marquis of 
Pineapple, or Baron Mango of his native land, 
was a shock to mv then obscured sense of the 
proprieties. He had a white valet in livery al- 
ways at his heels — a curious inversion, as it then 
seemed to me, of the social order — and if he 
kicked repeatedly, and otherwise ill-treated him, 
as he was said to have done, the poor wretch 
was only suffering vicariously for the wrongs 
and cruelties inflicted by his own race upon that 
of his master. 

I recollect that there was a student of African 
blood at the college in Hartford, Connecticut, 
under very different circumstances of respect 
from our negro comrade at the University of 
Edinburgh. He was a modest, bright mulatto, 
who by some academic artifice or other was sup- 
posed to be pursuing his studies at the college, 
though he never made his appearance in any of 
the classes. He used to come out at night, and 
at night only, from the back door and stairs of 
a house of one of the professors near by, with 
whom he was probably picking up some surrepr 
titious scraps of learning. Although he passed 
many years in the collegiate neighborhood, took 
his degree, and finally, I think, became a clergy- 
man of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he nev- 

8 



114 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

er exchanged a single word with any of the stu- 
dents, or ventured to show himself except in the 
shades of the evening. We had no more fel- 
lowship with hini than if he had been a gorilla 
of his aboriginal wilds, and we deigned only to 
cast a glance of suspicion at the poor fellow 
whenever we caught a rare sight of his shrink- 
ing shadow. 

There were a good many roisterers among 
the students ; but it must be acknowledged that, 
though convivial habits were far too pi'evalent, 
the great majority of my comrades at the Uni- 
versity fairly carried out their purposes of study. 
There were several young men whom I knew, 
who showed a remarkable zeal for scientific pur- 
suit, and some of them rose subsequently to dis- 
tinction. Dr. Carpenter, the author of the "Phys- 
iology," and professor in the University of Lon- 
don, was my fellow-student; so was Reid, also a 
professor, and famous for his physiological re- 
searches ; and Day, the Chemist ; and Wilson, the 
Professor of Technology; and Forbes, the Pro- 
fessor of N^atural History ; and Brown, the au- 
thor of "Rab and his Friends." These all gave 
promise, even while students, of the eminence to 
which they subsequently reached. There were 
.others, however, of whom equally high, if not 
higher, hopes were entertained, but who failed to 



A SUCCESSFUL STUDENT. 115 

accomplish the lofty aims of their youth ; some 
from the inevitable fiat of fate, but more, alas ! 
in consequence of their self-chosen and perverse 
ways of life. 

W , of Nottingham, gave such proofs of 

power while a student in Edinburgh, that it was 
thought by all who knew him there was nothing 
in the world worth having that he was not ca- 
pable of acquiring. I hardly ever saw him in a 
lecture -room, but he always passed his exami- 
nations with great credit, and won all the prizes 
for which he competed. He read the best pa- 
pers, and was the ablest debater of the Royal 
Medical Society, of which he became president. 
He was a tall, raw-boned, bold-faced fellow, with 
short, bristly hair, a broad, knotty forehead, and 
flaming black eye ; and with his general defiant 
air, and the habit he had of turning up the cuffs 
of his coat-sleeves, seemed always as if he were 
ready for a set-to with the whole world. 

After taking his degree, he married and set- 
tled in a large provincial town in England, where 
he was appointed professor of the Medical Col- 
lege, and continued those medico -chemical re- 
searches to w^hich he was ardently devoted. Al- 
ready recognized and quoted everywhere as an 
authority in science, he promised to obtain a 
place among the highest on the roll of English 



116 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

worthies, when the brilliant genius was suddenly 
obscured, and finally lost forever in the self-in- 
flicted ruin of the man. He had always, even 
while a student, been fond of an occasional con- 
vivial bout, and won a reputation for being as 
deep a drinker as he was a thinker. These hab- 
its of his youth, continued into his more mature 
age, finally obtained the mastery over him, and 
led him to perdition. 

The career of G , of Newcastle, was an- 
other illustration of blasted hopes. He evinced, 
while a student, a great aptitude for physical 
research, and became prominent as a winner of 
prizes, and member of the Royal Medical Socie- 
ty. He was ambitious, vain, and poor, and seem- 
ed always to have an uneasy consciousness of his 
threadbare coat, which made him very sensitive 
to the proud man's contumely. He took his re- 
venge by a boastful profession of extreme rad- 
ical opinions, and a defiant bearing toward his 
social superiors. After graduating, he made a 
meteor-like start in his native town, but seeking 
in London a wider field of display, and meeting 
with disappointment, he was soon extinguished 
in the vortex of the dark abominations of the 
great metropolis; for, with all his unquestioned 
ability and lofty aspirations, he was ever gravi- 
tating toward the lowest vice. 



A GENIUS. 11 Y 

Charles Maitland, of Brighton, impressed nie 
more than any other of ray Edinburgh comrades 
with the idea of a genius. He seemed to know 
everything by intuition. I never saw liim with 
a book in his hand, and he seldom attended a 
lecture. He, notwithstanding, appeared to be 
well up in every subject connected with his pro- 
fession, and always passed his examinations with 
great credit. 

He must, however, at some time have industri- 
ously pursued analytical cliemistry, in which he 
was a great proficient. While a student of Pro- 
fessor Turner, in London, he discovered a test for 
morphia (nitric acid?), for which he is credited 
in the work of his teacher, once the universal 
manual of chemistry. He had quite a museum 
of the results of his investigations as an analyst, 
and, among others, a large glass bottle full of su- 
gar, which he had obtained from the urine of a 
diabetic patient. To show his faith in chemical 
unity, or his superiority to all prejudice from ac- 
cidental association, or his unwavering confidence 
in his own skill as a manipulator, he used, much 
to my disgust, to take lump after lump of this 
sugar into his mouth, and suck it with more a|> 
parent gusto than if it had been a French bon- 
bon. To my protest, and expressions of horror, 
he would reply, " It is chemically pure — it is gen- 



118 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

nine sugar — C, H, O in due elementary propor- 
tion as any other sugar ; and, as it is that, it does 
not matter whether it is derived from a vegeta- 
ble or animal secretion. Come, taste it !" I was 
not philosopher enough for that; and while I 
conceded to him the best of the argument, I also 
yielded to him the whole of the sugar. 

He was never at rest, and passed most of his 
days wandering over the hills and the mountains, 
all alone. He used always to carry with him, 
strapped to his back, a portable barometer, nomi- 
nally for measuring heights, but I think, in reali- 
ty, only to give an appearance of purjDOse to what 
was nothing more than a vagrant mood. 

Maitland belonged to a remarkable family. 
His father was one of four brothers, all of whom 
were officers of the English Army, and fought at 
Waterloo. The eldest. Sir Peregrine Maitland, a 
soldier of renown, had acquired great notoriety 
in society by running away with the daughter of 
the Duke of Richmond, and marrying her. He, 
after undergoing some penance of supercilious 
neglect from his noble father and mother in law, 
was finally rewarded for his audacity in becom- 
ing the husband of a Lenox, by elevation to a 
baronetcy, and a succession of governorships. 

The three other brothers, among whom was 
my friend's father, were discharged simultane- 



A HETERODOX PROFESSOR. 119 

ously from tlie army for disobedience of orders, 
having refused, when serving as officers in Mal- 
ta, to give the command of " Present arms !" 
to the soldiers under them, on the passing of 
the " Host " in a procession of Roman Catholics. 
They all became, I think, clergymen of the Es- 
tablished Church of England. The father of my 
friend, at any rate, took orders, and was well- 
known as the fervid evangelical preacher of 
Brighton. 

Young Maitland, while in Edinburgh, was very 
ardent in his expression of devotional sentiment, 
but it was of a heterodox kind ; for he professed 
the peculiar tenets of one Campbell of Row (?), 
whom, and some of his wealthy followers, he of- 
ten visited. He was fond of asserting his be- 
lief in what he called " assurance," and used to 
illustrate it by saying that if he fell down dead 
on the instant, he was sure of going to heaven 
— a doctrine which the Church of Scotland pro- 
nounced heretical, and excommunicated my friend 
Maitland's apostle (Campbell) for holding. 

Maitland, soon after taking his degree, wrote a 
work on the catacombs of Rome, which was well 
received both by critics and readers. He has 
given no further public evidence of vitality. He 
seemed to have the capacity for great things, but 
was too erratic and unsteadfjist for the concen- 



120 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

tratiou of purpose «nnd continuousness of effort 
necessary to accomplish them. 

Samuel Brown, a lineal descendant of Brown 
the metaphysician, who succeeded Dugald Stew- 
art as Professor of Mental Philosophy in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, was a remarkable youth. 
He seemed to combine in his nature both the 
poet and natural philosopher. He composed 
sonnets and analyzed chemical compounds. He 
was a philosophical dreamer as well as a practical 
experimentalist; but the conceptions of his fancy 
were impatient of the operations of his hand. 

Brown's dominant idea was the unity of mat- 
ter; and he announced to the world that he had 
found, in the course of his manipulations in the 
laboratory, a link in the chain of proof which 
could not fail to lead to the establishment of the 
fact. He had converted, he said, albumen into 
iodine, or iodine into albumen, or something of 
the kind, and contributed an elaborate paper, giv- 
ing all the details of his experiments, to one of 
the scientific journals or societies. His trustful 
friends hailed him triumphantly at once as the 
apostle of a new revelation in science. 

Some sceptical chemists, however, among whom 
was Liebig, repeated Brown's experin:ients, and, 
finding that albumen remained albumen, and io- 
dine iodine, in spite of all their manipulations, 



A DELUSION. 121 

declared that the world had been deceived by a 
false teacher. Brown defended himself, reassert- 
ing his former statement, and declaring that a 
repetition of his experiments had given precisely 
the same results as before, showing that albumen 
was iodine, and iodine albumen. Met anew by 
denials and counter-statements of experimental 
results, he still adhered pertinaciously to his orig- 
inal assertion, until finally summoned to give a 
convincing proof of its truth by a public exhi- 
bition of his processes, he remained silent, and 
slunk away into an obscure retirement, no longer 
seen or heard of but by a few personal friends. 
He soon died — it was thought of a broken heart. 
His friends, who believed him to be the very soul 
of truth, never doubted that he was sincere in his 
repeated assertions of the results of his experi- 
ments ; but as they could not refuse to accept 
the obvious proofs of their falsity, were fain to 
reconcile their faith in Brown's veracity with the 
evidence of scientific fact, by the supposition that 
the imaginary had gained such a mastery over 
the practical element of his character, that he had 
been made unconsciously the victim of a delusion. 
Brown was, undoubtedly, a youth of great abil- 
ity. His knowledge and practical investigations 
of chemistry were extensive. He was an elo- 
quent speaker in the Speculative, Physical, and 



122 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

Medical Societies, a clear demonstrative lecturer, 
and no contemptible poet, even while still a youth- 
ful student. He had the mark of distinction in 
his personal appearance. A neat, orderly person, 
clothed in sober black, tall, delicately organized, 
with a soft, almost tearful, abstracted eye, a pale, 
expansive forehead, and a certain shadowy air of 
remoteness in his whole manner and appearance, 
he had the look of a spiritually-minded poet, and 
abstract philosopher. He was respected by us all, 
and by his personal friends he was worshipped. 

I must not forget, while recalling the embryo 
philosophers, my friend, Robert Anderson, of 
Leith — a curly, light- haired, blue -eyed, ruddy- 
faced, laughing youth, when I first knew him, 
and whose acquaintance I afterward renewed 
when he was a bald-headed, austere-looking Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow. 
He w^as already distinguished, while a student, as 
a skilful, practical chemist, and obtained the prize 
for the most beautiful specimen I ever saw of 
some crystals of a rare and difficult comj)psition 
— the kind and name of which I have forgotten — 
due entirely to his own cunning manipulation. 



THE REVELLERS. 123 



CHAPTER X. 

A Band of Revellers.— Making a Night of it.— The Two 

Brothers R . — Their History. — A Mother, and not a 

Mother.— A Victim to Slavery. —The Third Brother's 

Fate. — Description of the R 's. — The Eldest R . 

— A Fancy Ball. — The End of the Eldest. — The Younger 

R in Paris. — Incidents of his Career. — Adventures 

in England. — His Return to the United States. — Disap- 
pearance. " 

I DID not seek companionship solely among 
the young philosophers, but also, too frequently,! 
am ashamed to be forced to acknowledge, in the 
society of the wild roisterers and revellers of the 
University. There was a full band of these liv- 
ing together in the house of an old retii-ed naval 
surgeon, whose own habits, formed in the ward- 
room and cockpit aboard ship, during many a 
long cruise about the world, were not of the 
most rigid sort. Most of these jovial fellows 
were from the AYestern world — Newfoundland, 
Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; and two of 

the wildest, the brothers R , were credited to 

my own portion of the Continent, being natives 



124 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

of New Orleans. I never, by chance, saw any of 
tliem at a lecture but two, who were advanced 
students, and working hard for the last exami- 
nation. 

The half-dozen others, including my two coun- 
trymen, were as idle at their studies as they were 
busy in mischief and dissipation. They used to 
sally out every night systematically for a de- 
. bauch, after they had passed the whole of the 
day in sleeping off the effects of a previous one. 
Sometimes they began with a lounge at the thea- 
tre, and sometimes with a match in the billiard- 
room, but always closed with a drinking-bout at 
the " Rainbow," or some other equally favored 
place of convivial resort, whose patience of cred- 
it their long unpaid scores had not yet exhaust- 
ed. They never went home till morning, and not 
always then. Fired with whiskey, they provoked 
any late loiterers like themselves — or early labor- 
ers going to their work — they might meet, by an 
assault of some kind, either striking or hustling 
them, or crushing their hats down over their 
eyes. The result, of course, was a fight, and the 
natural consequence, bruised shins and black eyes 
in abundance, and frequent nights at the watch- 
house. They all, or some of them, at least, were 
never free from a very evident show of the ef- 
fects of these nocturnal collisions, and looked 



THE BROTHERS R . 125 

mostly like well -mauled prize -fighters after a 
regular set-to. 

The two young countrymen of my own, the 

brothers R , were not the least distinguished 

of these wild revellers. Their father, who at the 
time was regarded as one of the wealthiest mer- 
chants in the United States, supplied his sons 
with a most profuse allowance of money, and, in 
their reckless expenditure of it, they were only 
following his own example of prodigality. He 
brought his boys the whole way from Liverpool 
to Edinburgh in a post-chaise and four, throwing 
away handfuls of gold on his right and left dur- 
ing the route, and installing himself, on his ar- 
rival, in the most expensive apartments of the 
Royal Hotel, where, during his stay, he lived 
like a prince. 

His sons had been, for some time previous to 
coming to Edinburgh, living in Liverpool in a 
handsome residence, under the charge of a dark 
woman — a quadroon from New Orleans. She, 
though undoubtedly the mother of the three 
boys under her care, was, by a cruel prohibition, 
prevented from making the fact known to any 
one, even to her own children ; who, being so 
taught, continued to regard and treat lier always 
as a hired attendant. They had from her all tlie 
care, tenderness, and devotion of maternal love. 



126 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

while she, poor creature, had from them neither 
filial affection nor even the acknowledgment of 
the name of mother. She lived and died thus be- 
reaved, and never ventured to whisper in words 
her natural claims, though she vindicated them 
hourly by the perpetual sacrifice of self, even to 
the denial of her own personality, to the sup- 
posed interests of her children. Slavery then 
existed in the United States, and she, born a 
slave, sold and bought a slave, lived in perpet- 
ual torture, and died a victim to this monstrous 
cruelty. 

The third son — for there were three — I never 
saw; but I heard that he was an unmanageable 
lad. On running away from school, he enlisted 
as a hussar in the English army. He went to 
India with his regiment, and was never heard of 
again, being lost, possibly, in the jungle, or the 
jaws of a tiger. The other two sons were my 
fellow-students in Edinburgh. They were tall, 
well-proportioned, good-looking young fellows, 
of fair complexions, with the shghtest possible 
tint of brown, and of long, silky, and rather light 
curly hair. Their features gave to the ordinary 
observer no indication of their African origin 
through their quadroon mother, but there was a 
dilatation of the nostrils, a fulness of the upper 
lip, and a certain heaviness of step, due to their 



THE FANCY BALL. 127 

large, spreading feet, whicli would have revealed 
it to an expert. They were born slaves, and by 
the laws of their native State of Louisiana might 
have been sold, and bought, or seized for debt, as 
any other exchangeable commodity. They were 
evidently, however, unconscious of any legal deg- 
radation, and bore themselves with as much grace, 
freedom, and independence as any of tlie sons of 
gentlemen with whom they daily associated. 

The eldest was fond of society, and frequented 
some of the highest circles in Edinburgh. He 
always dressed in the height of fashion, and his 
annual tailor's bill would more than have paid 
for a year's support of some of the by no means 
least thriving of his fellow-students. I accom- 
panied him, I recollect, to the fancy ball at the 
Assembly Rooms, where he made his appearance 
in the costume of a courtier of the time of Fran- 
cis the First of France — slashed velvet doublet, 
satin hose, plumed bonnet, and gold-hiUed sword 
complete, the whole of which cost him sixty 
pounds, or three hundred dollars. 

The fancy ball was for the benefit of the In- 
firmary, and was a very exclusive affair. I did 
not venture to appear in a character costume, but 
in a dress which certainly would now be regard- 
ed as an eminently fanciful one, although it was 
such as was generally worn on the occasion. My 



128 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

black dress-coat de rigueur had the inside of its 
tails lined with white satin, my waistcoat was 
embroidered silk of divers bright colors, and I 
w^orc pumps and white silk stockings. No one 
could obtain a ticket of admission to the ball 
without having secured a preliminary guarantee 
of his social fitness, in the form of a " voucher," 
as it was termed, of respectability, signed by a 
dozen " Lady Patronesses." Every tradesman of 
the town was rigorously ruled out. 

The expenses of the eldest R became final- 
ly so inordinate that even his prodigal father pro- 
tested against, though he paid them. He insist- 
ed, however, that he should leave Edinburgh, 
Avhich he accordingly did, and went to Dublin. 
Here he met his good angel, in the form of the 
daughter of the surgeon with whom he was dom- 
iciled. He fell in love with her, and, through her 
influence, devoting himself seriously to his stud- 
ies, succeeded in passing his examination as a 
surgeon. He then married and went to Canada 
• — the only refuge, at that time, of his wronged 
race — where he became a respectable practitioner 
of medicine. 

The brother remained in Edinburgh, finding, 
unfortunately, no kind providence in sweetheart, 
wife, or indeed in any form, to interpose and 
check his reckless career of dissipation. I left 



A DISSIPATED CAREER. 129 

him still lingering at the University when I de- 
parted, liopeful of a degree, but seemingly mak- 
ing no efforts to obtain it. 

When I had been a year or more in Paris, I 
met him accidentally, and he told me that, after 
several unsuccessful attempts, he had finally grad- 
uated. I induced him to take up his quarter in 
the lodging-house where I lived. He came ; but, 
try as I might, I could not prevail upon him to 
reform his habits of dissipation, for the indul- 
gence of which, with a more confirmed inclina- 
tion, he met in the French capital greater facili- 
ties than ever. 

His father was no longer the rich man of 1836 
and 1837, for the mercantile crash of 1838 and 
1839 had come, and, having overwhelmed the once 
flourishing house of which he was the chief part- 
ner, left him, on his escape from its ruins, noth- 
ing but the refuge of a small cotton plantation in 
Mississippi, which had been conceded to him by 
the indulgence of his creditors. He, however, 
managed to allow his son from his greatly re- 
duced income the sum of eight hundred dollars 
a year. With each quarter's remittance came a 
letter of urgent appeal to a reformation of life, 
and a reminder of the limits of paternal forbear- 
ance and supply, but it was all in vain. 

The young fellow persisted in his perverse 

9 



130 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

ways, until, finally, his father, provoked to extrem- 
ities, revealed to him his birth, and at the same 
time, while diminishing his allowance, threatened 
to cut him off entirely. The effect was the re- 
verse of what it is hoped his father intended. 
The poor youth cried out to me in despair, "I 
am a bastard ! I am a bastard ! and I will de- 
stroy myself." It would have been better, per- 
haps, if, in carrying out his resolution, he had 
swallowed some quick active poison. He took 
the no less certain but slower means of drinking 
himself to death — a process with which he had 
been daily growing more familiar. 

On each quarter's day, as soon as he received 
his remittance and exchanged his draft at the 
banker's, he would cram his jDOckets with the 
large silver five-franc pieces, which were then in 
general currency in France, and sally out to the 
cafes and worse resorts, until he spent all to the 
last sou, when he was generally brought home in 
a fit of insensibility from drunkenness. 

On one occasion he stumbled into my room 
when intoxicated, and observing that his coat, 
waistcoat, and all his other pockets were cram- 
med with five-franc pieces, I emptied them out, 
and locked up the money in my drawer. He did 
not resist in the least, and perhaps was totally 
unconscious of what I had done. Several weeks 



EFFECT OF A REMITTANCE. 131 

afterward I found him in a state of great discon- 
solation, grieving over his poverty, and telling 
me piteously that his landlady threatened to put 
him out-of-doors if he did not immediately pay 
her the last quarter's board. I bade him send 
for the woman, and I would settle with her. 
When I had paid the bill, which amounted to 
several hundred francs, and he was in the full 
expression of his gratitude for my apparent gen- 
erosity, I told him the money was his own, and 
how I happened to possess it. He could hard- 
ly be made to believe me, for he had not the 
least recollection of my having taken it from his 
person. 

On another occasion, while he was in his high 
jinks just after having received a remittance, the 
landlady appealed to me, in the middle of the 
night, to go to his room to do what I could 
to allay the frightful noises which were issuing 
from it. I no sooner rapped at the locked door 
and mentioned my name, for I was always a 
privileged person with him, than I was let in — 

and such a sight ! My young friend R , in 

the full costume of a Turk, but "disguised" in 
liquor like any Christian, stood holding on to 
the door of the disordered room, where bedding, 
bolsters, pillows, sheets and coverlets, table and 
chairs, were heaped up together in confusion. 



132 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

while two women, all bedizened with paint and 
masked-ball finery, were crouching under the bed- 
stead, where they had tried to hide themselves* 
on becoming aware of ray approach. There had 
been a fracas in consequence of jealousy, or dis- 
satisfaction of some kind, and one of the females, 
in her fury, had begun to toss about the contents 
of the room. Hence the noise. I persuaded the 
Grand Turk to dismiss his harem, and the house 
was again restored to its habitual quietude. 

Young R, remained a long time in Paris, 

with the single advantage of acquiring a thor- 
ough knowledge of the French tongue. I met 
him several years afterward in New York, and 
in such a state of flourishing vitality as showed 
that his chosen process of self-destruction had 
been thus far very slow in operating. He gave 
me some account of the vicissitudes of life through 
which he had passed since I parted with him in 
Paris. Destitute of means, for his father had 
cut off his allowance, he had wandered into Eng- 
land, where he gained a precarious livelihood for 
some time in teaching French in a country town. 
Subsequently he had made the acquaintance of 
an English banker, who had taken such a fancy 
to him that he appointed him a clerk in his bank- 
ing-house. My friend was in the full tide of 
prosperity, with a fair hope of a future partner- 



A TRAGEDY. 133 

sliip, when, some defalcation having occurred, he 
became the object for a time, though unjustly 
so, as he told me and I sincerely believe, of sus- 
picion, and was forced to leave. 

After leaving England, he paid a visit to a 
former college comrade living at St. Johns, New 

Brunswick. This was B , whom I knew w^ell, 

a congenial companion of R in his wild 

moods at Edinburgh. The visit had a tragic 
termination ; for, during a sporting expedition, 

B was accidentally shot, and fell dead. 

R seemed to carry with him a malignant in- 
fluence wherever he went. 

When I saw him in New York, he had just 
returned from a visit to his father on the plan- 
tation in Mississippi, where he found a cousin in 
full possession of the favor and recognized as the 
heir-to-be of a property to which he thought he 
himself had the higher claim. Quarrelling with 
this cousin, and dissatisfied with the conduct of 
his father, he parted with them in anger, and was 
once more adrift in the wide world. On taking 
leave of me, he proposed to visit his brother in 
Canada. I never saw or heard of him again. 



134 MY COLLEGE DAYS« 



CHAPTER XI. 

The Brothers F . — An American Claimant for a Scotch 

Title. — A Eetired and Happy Life. — Sudden Aspirations. 
— Lord Lovat. — Devotion of a Clan. — A Long Suit in Ed- 
inburgh.— Luxury and the Jews. — A Day of Reckoning. 
— An Adverse Decision. — Family Ruin. — The Eldest Son. 
— The Survivors of a Wreck. — Another American Claim- 
ant. — Precocious Benevolence. — A Triumph. — Final Re- 
sult. 

There were three young Americans, the broth- 
ers F , who were picking up a miscellaneous 

education at the University. They occasionally 
attended the classes, and always frequented the 
company of the students. I made their acquaint- 
ance, and through them that of their family, who 
were living at Edinburgh. 

The father, if not a Scotchman by birth, of 
Scottish origin, was a clergyman of the Presby- 
terian Church of the United States. While set- 
tled in some part of South Carolina, in the per- 
formance of the ordinary parochial duties of his 
profession, he was suddenly convinced of the fea- 
sibility of his claim to the barony and estate of 
Lovat of Scotland, which had been escheated on 



A CONTENTED PASTOR. 135 

the execution of Simon, Lord Lovat, for taking 
part with Prince Charles in the Scotch rebellion 
of 1746. 

The Rev. Mr. F had always boasted him- 
self a lineal descendant of this famous rebel, but, 
notwithstanding the long proclaimed amnesty 
and restoration in England of forfeited titles and 
estates, had hitherto showed no inclination to 
substantiate his pretensions, but seemed content- 
ed with the obscure position of a rural pastor, 
the duties of which, moreover, he performed with 
fidelity, and to the full satisfaction of his humble 
cliarge. He had married an American whom I 
knew — a woman still retaining, in advanced life, 
much of the beauty for which she was remarka- 
ble in her youth, and all that refined amiability 
of manner and character which ever distinguished 
her. With three promising sons and two hand- 
some daughters, they lived a simple but content- 
ed life, happy themselves, and with a fair pros- 
pect of future happiness and prosperity for their 
children. 

In the mean time, the Lovat estate in Inverness- 
shire, in Scotland — a very extensive and valuable 
property — had been ceded by the English Com- 
missioners or Scotch courts, or whomsoever the 
authority was held, to a Mr. Eraser, an influential 
Catholic gentleman, on his claim as the nearest 



136 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

living descendant of the executed Simon, Lord 
Lovat. He, accordingly, was in the possession 
and full enjoyment of the estate, and no one ap- 
peared to dispute his right, not even the boasted 
lineal offshoot in South Carolina. It is possible 
that the modest clergyman, in his far Western 
retreat, in happy unconsciousness of amnesty or 
restoration of estates, may have known nothing 
of the splendid property of his boasted ances- 
tors being in abeyance. At any rate, the Scotch 
Fraser was met by no opposing claim, from the 
American at least, and entered into the posses- 
sion of the Lovat estate without a protest from 
him. 

The fortunate possessor, however, not content 
with the estate alone, claimed also the title. He 
failed, however, from some break in his line of 
descent, to satisfy the full requirements of the 
courts or the House of Lords, and his claim was 
rejected. l!»J"otwithstanding this defeat, he be- 
came Lord Lovat, but not the Lord Lovat. The 
Whigs were then in power, and, as Mr. Fraser of 
Lovat was an influential adherent of their party, 
they conferred upon him an English peerage with 
the same title — Lord Lovat — with the addition, 
however, of an earldom, as he would have borne 
had he been successful in his claim to the Scotch 
barony. 



CLAIMING AN ESTATE. 137 

The American preteuder had become cogni- 
zant of these facts by the chance perusal of a 
paragraph in an English or Scotch paper, which 
had drifted into the remote corner of the world 
where he lived, or in some other hap-hazard way, 
and his aspirations to rank and wealth were 
at once awakened. Convinced, no doubt, of his 
right, and believing that he could prove it, he re- 
solved to go to Scotland without delay, to prose- 
cute his claim to the Scotch barony and estate of 
Lovat. He accordingly, on the instant, resigned 
his church, severed his long connection wdth his 
flock, abandoned the ministry, broke asunder all 
his associations of friendship and country, turn- 
ed what little available property he had into 
ready money, and embarked with his wife and 
family for Europe. 

His first visit, on arriving in Scotland, was to 
Inverness-shire, where the Lovat estate lies. Here 
he was received, I was told, with great demon- 
strations of devotion by all the tenants and the 
members of the clan Eraser, who hailed him as 
the genuine laird, and accepted him as their au- 
thentic chief. In earlier days, this intuitive rec- 
ognition, backed by the claymores of a host of 
stalwart Highlanders, might have seated him in 
the hall of his fathers, in spite of any rival in pos- 
session, though sustained by law and authority. 



138 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

Times, however, had changed, and the pretend- 
er could only make good his claims through the 
slow and costly processes of the legal courts. 
He therefore repaired to Edinburgh, where he 
settled with his family, and began the tedious 
suit at law which was to end, as he hoped, in 
making him not only the possessor of all the ti- 
tles, hereditaments, and possessions appertaining 
to the true Lord of Lovat, but of the mesne prof- 
its in addition, for which the false incumbent was 
responsible. 

The mere preliminary expenses and retainers 
to counsel soon exhausted the small supj)ly of 
funds brought from America, and the poor client 
was forced to have recourse to the Jews ; and 
when I first made the acquaintance of his family, 
they were living luxuriously on means derived, 
it was said, from that fatal source. 

Year after year passed without a decision of 
the main question, though, now and then, some 
collateral issues were settled, which bore adverse- 
ly, however, on the case of the American client. 
He and his family still kept up a vague hope of 
a distant accession to rank and wealth, while the 
approach of the day of reckoning, by no means 
so remote, was sure and certain. The money- 
lenders becoming more and more extortionate, 
and their grudging supplies so small, that the 



AN ADVERSE DECISION. 139 

claimant found it difficult to meet bot^h the de- 
mands of the lawyers and the requirements of 
living of his family. They were, in consequence, 
soon reduced to such straits that the would-be 
Lord Lovat would have gladly exchanged all his 
splendid hopes of rank and wealth for the sim- 
plest station and competence, and no doubt bit- 
terly regretted his abandonment of the happy 
though obscure home in Carolina. After many 
years of wearying expectation and exhausting 
expense, there was a decision of the case of 

F versus Lord Lovat. It was adverse to 

F . 

The ruin of himself and family was finally con- 
summated. The long-deferred hope had already 
shown its fatal effects. The wife had died of a 
broken heart; the eldest daughter, a beautiful girl, 
unable, in the uncertainty of her position, to fix 
her affections, became a victim of disappointment, 
and did not long survive her mother ; the third 
son, careless and irregular, met with an early 
death ; and the father, seeking relief from the 
enforced idleness of his changed position, and 
the depression of his spirits, induced by the fre- 
quent fluctuations of hope and despair, resorted 
to means which soon brouoht his life to an m- 
nominious close. 

The eldest son was a youth of much talent, 



140 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

and, being fond of study, might, if he had been 
able to concentrate his attention in the pursuit 
of any particular profession, have arisen to dis- 
tinction. Led, however, from an early period of 
his life to believe that he was probable heir to a 
title and great estate, he could not devote him- 
self to the necessary work for any special voca- 
tion of a humbler life. His taste for study was 
consequently w^asted in desultory reading, and 
his unquestionable abilities were exhausted in 
the mere conversational and social triumphs of 
the hour. After the disappointment of his high 
hopes in Scotland he repaired to New York, 
where I occasionally met him by hazard, as, with 
increasing poverty and diminishing self-respect, 
he was shy of recognition by his former friends. 
After occasional glances of him as he flitted 
round the corners, or passed rapidly through the 
by-streets, looking, in his meagre habiliments, like 
a fitful ghost of his former respectability, I finally 
lost sight of him altogether. 

On this wreck of a family, there were two so 
fortunate as to secure a harbor of safety. The 
second son studied theology, and, becoming a 
clergyman of the established Church of Scot- 
land, received the appointment of minister of the 
Scotch Church in Bombay. The only surviving 
daughter married a young physician, and went 



ANOTHER AMERICAN CLAIMANT. 141 

also to India with her husband, who had received 
some good medical appointment there. 

I met in Edinburgh another American claim- 
ant to an estate in Scotland, Ferdinand Campbell 
Stewart. I recognized in him a former fellow- 
student in Philadelphia, where he was the assist- 
ant of the chemical professor, Dr. Hare. Though, 
of course, very familiar with his looks, I had had 
no personal acquaintance with him until first rec- 
ognizing him in the botanical class in Edin- 
burgh I became, in the course of time, his inti- 
mate friend. He and I were frequently in each 
other's rooms, dining and supping together. 

Stewart was a diligent attendant at the med- 
ical lectures, though the principal object of his 
visit to Edinburgh was business in connection 
with the lawsuit he was then prosecuting in the 
Scotch courts. He had often his lawyer with 
him, a writer of the signet ; and I recollect meet- 
ing this gentleman and his little daughter at my 
friend's chambers one morning at breakfast. We 
had an abundant supply of those large and lus- 
cious strawberries for which Edinburgh is fa- 
mous. I, either having eaten my full share of 
them and had enough, or, being too modest to 
accept of more, resisted the pressing solicita- 
tions of my friend, who, however, continued them 
Vr'ith such urgency, that the little girl, who could 



142 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

not have been more than seven or eight years 
old, interposed in my behalf, saying, in a very 
gentle, compassionate tone, " Oh ! dinna press the 
laddie." We all burst into a hearty laugh, much 
to the poor child's discomfiture, at this preco- 
cious exhibition of considerate sympathy. 

My friend's father was the younger son of a 
Scotch laird, and, obliged to shift for himself, had 
emigrated to the United States ; and, being a man 
of considerable scientific acquirements, was ap- 
pointed professor of chemistry in William and 
Mary College, of Virginia. His elder brother 
had inherited and was in the enjoyment of the 
patrimonial estate, Ascog, a handsome property 
in the Isle of Bute. He married a widow, with 
a daughter by a former husband, but never had 
any children by her himself. On the prospect 
of death, during his last illness he made a will 
by which he bequeathed the estate of Ascog, the 
entail of which had expired, to his wife and her 
child. 

Without any direct issue himself, and without 
any special legal devise on his part, the estate 
would have descended in course to the father of 
my friend. This the brother, the Laird of As- 
cog, strove to prevent by his will ; but, as his will 
was executed during an illness which resulted in 
death, it became, according to Scotch law, void 



A SUCCESSFUL SUITOR. 143 

and of no effect. Upon this ground my friend's 
father laid his cLaini, nnd instituted proceedings 
in the courts of Edinburgh to estabhsli it. As 
he, however, was incapacitated by indisposition, 
caused, it was said, in consequence of the sudden 
j)rospect of wealth on the death of his brother, 
iny acquaintance, his eldest son, was represent- 
ing his interests and those of his family in the 
prosecution of the case. 

I sat by him when the decision was rendered 
by the Scotch law-lords. It was in his favor, 
and he was so moved with excitement and de- 
light that I could hardly hold him down in his 
seat; in fact, he seemed ready to leap out of his 
clothes in the convulsive tumult of his joy. Tliis 
decision, however, was not final, for the defeat- 
ed defendants appealed to the House of Lords. 
Here, however, my friend again triumphed. Stew- 
art, subsequently, lived and practised his profes- 
sion as a doctor with success in the city of New 
York, while at the same time he seemed to be in 
the enjoyment of the means of a man of fortune, 
the proceeds, no doubt, of the Scotch estate for 
which he had been a successful suitor. 



144 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

General Disunion of Students. — A Kemarkable Exception. 
— Political Unanimity. — Prevalence of Toryism. — Influ- 
ence of Tory Professors. — Professor Wilson's Example 
and Teachings. — Royal Medical Society. — Its Traditions. 
— Sir James Mackintosh. — The Brunonian Controversy. 
— Speculative Society.- — Botanical and Geological Tours. 
— Exercises. — New Haven. — Huntsmen and Horsemen. — 
The Theatre. — Church Intolerance. — Studies for a De- 
gree. — Examinations. — Defence of Thesis. — An Exami- 
nation Passed. — The Three Munros. 

The students were scattered all about the town, 
generally living in i^rivate lodgings — many, no 
doubt, very scantily provided for in lofty quar- 
ters and with low diet, perched eight or nine flats 
high, and cultivating literature on the tenui ave- 
nd — the little oat-meal of Sydney Smith. They 
only met together in large numbers while attend- 
ing the classes, and then divided into sections, 
according to their studies, and for no more than 
an hour at a time, at different periods of the day. 

The students did not, therefore, form a very 
homogeneous body, and I cannot recall but one 
occasion when they were united together in the 



ENTHUSIASM EXHIBITED. 145 

manifestation of a common sentiment or motive. 
This, curiously enough, was for an object quite 
remote from all academic interests, and of a kind 
which would have hardly been thought to move 
at all, and much less with any unanimity, hun- 
dreds of youth socially and nationally so diverse. 
They met together in full force to protest against 
some measure of the Whig ministry. 

There was hardly a single student absent from 
the gathering, and the speeches and resolutions 
were received with a demonstration of enthusi- 
asm of which the voice and muscles of robust 
youth are alone capable. My countryman, the 

elder F , presided on the occasion, and, rising 

and coming forward boldly on the platform, de- 
livered a long speech explanatory of the object 
of the meeting. He, Avith his erect audacious 
presence as he faced the large audience, his black 
fj'ock-coat buttoned up to the throat, his hair 
turned defiantly back from his forehead, and hat 
in hand, looked, and with his loud peremptory 
voice, his sledge-hammer action, his positive state- 
ments, and his emphatic expression of them, ac- 
quitted himself, like a practised parliamentary 
orator addressing his constituents from the hust- 
ings. American though he was, he, of course, 
had forgotten all the traditional sentiments of 
his republican native land, and, yielding himself 

10 



146 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

up entirely to the inspiration of the hoped-for 
barony and domain of Lovat, his speech was 
as anti-progressive as any Tory lord or landed 
proprietor in the country might have delivered. 
There is no doubt, if my friend had been the Con- 
servative candidate for Parliament, and an elec- 
tion had taken place, he would have been at the 
head of the poll,- with an overwhelming majority 
of the votes in his favor, and the Liberal candi- 
date nowhere. 

The Edinburgh students of all classes were, at 
that time, Tories to a man — to a boy, I might say, 
for most of them were not out of their teens. It 
seems strange that it should be so, for most youth, 
with the natural hopefulness of their inexperi- 
enced age, are inclined toward change and prog- 
ress. In France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, 
the students, if interested in public affairs at all, 
have always been ranged on the Liberal side. The 
mutterings of an impending political storm are 
generally first heard in the coffee and beer houses 
of the French and German students, while they 
are ever the most forward to expose themselves 
to the buffetings of the revolutionary outburst, 
and the earliest to suffer and die among the vic- 
tims of its ravages. 

The Conservative sentiments of the Edinburgh 
students were attributable, perhaps, to the fact 



INFLUENCE OF PROFESSOR WILSON. 147 

that a m.'ijority of the professors were Tories; 
and some of the most popidar ones were not 
merely passive adherents, but active partisans of 
their cause. Wilson, the Professor of Moral Plii- 
losophy and Political Economy — the Christopher 
North o{ Blackwood — was the most prominent of 
these, and as he was universally admired and be- 
loved by the students, his example and opinions 
exercised a great influence over them. To think 
as he thought, and to do as he did, seemed at that 
time the very acme of good-sense and right con- 
duct. If this influence had been merely polit- 
ical, it might have hardly deserved a passing 
comment, for whether college lads are Whigs or 
Tories, Conservatives or Radicals, is probably of 
little importance to themselves, and certainly of 
none to the State. Their political opinions are 
nothing else than a caprice of the moment, to be 
varied by the interests of their future settled 
position in life. The Tory germ of blue may 
burst forth into the full-blown Radical flower of 
red ; or, as is more probable, will wither and die 
away altogether for want of stimulus to growth. 
It was the more permanent influence of the 
writings of Christopher North upon the habits 
of intellectual young men which was a serious 
evil, for, by a curious antithesis of destiny, the 
professor of moral philosophy became an incul- 



148 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

cator of immoralities. His JVoctes Amhrosicmce 
and other editorial rha^jsodies, " Christopher with 
his Rod and Creel," " Christopher in his Shoot- 
ing-jacket," " Christopher on the Moors," "Chris- 
topher on Colonsay," and such -like, however 
much they may have been inspired by genius, 
were never free from a strong flavor of whiskey ; 
and it is not astonishing that the young students, 
who delighted in their perusal, should have con- 
founded the effect of the one with that of the 
other. Finding literary effort so constantly as- 
sociated with sensual indulgence, they began to 
think the two inseparable ; and with the example 
of their favorite professor ever before them, sel- 
dom drank of the Pierian spring without a large 
admixture of Glenlivet or Islay in their potations. 
I am convinced that many young men of prom- 
ise thus acquired habits of indulgence which not 
only proved fatal to the bright hopes their tal- 
ents had awakened, but led to their final ruin 
and disgrace. 

The various societies served, to a certain de- 
gree, as a bond of union among some of the stu- 
dents, but only the few sui:>erior youth, and those 
zealous for improvement, were members of them. 
The Royal Medical Society, as it was grandly 
termed, had some traditions of which it was just- 
ly proud. Among its associates there had been 



THE BRUXONIAN CONTROVERSY, 149 

several who had risen to great distinction in the 
world. Sir James Mackintosh, who had begnn 
his career as a student of medicine, and gradu- 
ated from the University of Edinburgh as a phy- 
sician, was one of the presidents of the society, 
and most active members. He used to say that, 
long before he knew the difference between Ep- 
som salts and common table salt, he discussed all 
medical questions, and gave his opinion with the 
authority of an Hippocrates. The youth, in my 
time, were hardly less oracular in their enuncia- 
tions, though it is hoped they were based upon a 
more extensive foundation of knowledge. 

The great Brunonian controversy, as it was 
called, which had so stirred the medical circles 
of Edinburgh a century ago, was still remember- 
ed as associated with the medical society, where 
its controversies raged with more fierceness than 
elsewhere. The members were generally ranged 
on the side of Brown ; but one daring youth, then 
a president of the society, ventured to profess 
himself an adherent of Cullen, his opponent. He 
was provoked, in consequence, to a duel, and sac- 
rificed his life to his opinions. Brown and his 
followers were all for stimulants in the treatnTent 
of disease, while Cullen and his were all against 
them. Brown finally died a victim to his doc- 
trine; for, having the courage of his opinions, he 



150 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

drank himself to death. He never lectured with- 
out a bottle of brandy before him, as modern lect- 
urers have their decanter of water. He was a 
very plausible man, and succeeded in establish- 
ing a system of practice which a hundred years 
ago held wide sway, the effects of which were 
still evident in my day. 

The business of the medical society was the 
reading of papers on medical or cognate sub- 
jects, and subsequently discussing them. There 
was a good library of reference, and a reading- 
room with a w^ell-spread table of scientific and 
other periodicals, among which the Tory Black- 
icood was conspicuous. After each weekly ses- 
sion the members hurried into the refreshment- 
room below, and over their chocolate and cakes 
became college boys again, joyous in their relief 
from the formalities of the little senate above. 

Some few of the medical students, ambitious 
of oratorical distinction, joined the Speculative 
Society, but it was principally composed of the 
more advanced law students and aspiring young 
advocates of the Parliament House. This was 
the society of which Brougham, Horner, and Jef- 
frey in their youth were members, and where they 
first essayed their wings before venturing on lof- 
tier fligjhts. There were other associations of a 
scientific — as the " Physical " — and of a literary 



BOTANICAL AND GEOLOGICAL TOURS. 151 

kind; but the mass of students took no interest 
in them, finding in the requirements of college 
studies sufficient exercise for all the mental ac- 
tivity to which they were disposed. 

The professors of botany and natural history, 
including geology and mineralogy, used to bring- 
together, on an occasional Saturday, a goodly 
number of the members of their classes, and lead 
them, equipped with hammers, geological sacks, 
and botanical boxes, on long stretches of many 
miles about the country in search of stones, 
weeds, and fossils. These walks, which often, 
especially under the guidance of the indefatiga- 
ble Graham, Professor of Botany, extended to a 
length of forty miles or more, were the only ex- 
ercises of a systematic kind much practised by 
the students, who never banded together for any 
sort of athletic game. 

They skated, however, when the season rare- 
ly permitted, on Duddingstone Loch, a beautiful 
stretch of deep water on the outskirts of Edin- 
burgh, upon the W'Ooded bank of which was sit- 
uated the picturesque cottage manse of Thomp- 
son, the artist-clergyman. The loch was exces- 
sively deep, and it was only during a very severe 
winter that it was frozen sufficiently hard for 
any to venture upon the ice. When it was in 
safe condition, it became a scene of great gfiyety, 



152 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

all the fasliioDable peoj^le of Edinburgh turning 
out to look at the skaters and curlers, who were 
always in great force. In summer there was oc- 
casional bathing from the sands of Portobello. 

Voluntary walks, of course, w^ere frequently 
taken to Leith and Granton Pier, and oftener 
still to the famous tavern in ISTew Haven, where 
dinners were served through half a dozen courses 
of fish exclusively, with free admission, however, 
at each remove, of wine and whiskey. At New 
Haven is the ancient settlement of thd fishing 
colony, said to have come originally from Hol- 
land, whose men are so daring on the sea, and 
women so enticing on land, and all brave, hon- 
est, and true. It is from here come those pict- 
uresque-looking fish-women with laced caps, gay- 
ly striped petticoats, and blue bodices, who are 
seen and their voices heard in every street of 
Edinburgh, crying, " Caller baddies!" "Caller 
hose !" (fresh haddocks, fresh oysters). In a 
word. New Haven was the home of Christie 
Johnson, a genuine fish-wife, whose portrait Reid 
has so charmingly and truthfully painted. 

Some few of the students occasionally follow- 
ed the hounds, and I recollect a young English- 
man attending the anatomy class in full hunts- 
man's rig of scarlet coat, white cords, top-boots, 
and spurs, and, on coming out, mounting his nag 



COLLEGE SPORTSMEN. 153 

at the Uuiversity gates, where his groom had 
been walking the animal about during the lect- 
ure. There was now and then a tandem to be 
seen, but merely turned out for the occasion from 
the shabby resources of a livery-stable. Only one 
student, of whom I knew, kept his horse ; he was 
a young East Indian, of a milk-and-molasses com- 
plexion, a showily dressed, ostentatious fellow. 
He was fond of parading his animal — a diminu- 
tive cob, with a close-shaven hide and a brush 
tail — up and down the principal streets, with the 
smallest possible boy, " Tiger,'' as he was called, 
perched on the saddle, with black beaver hat and 
cockade, white cravat, gray livery coat, leather 
breeches, belt, and yellow-topped boots, all com- 
plete. 

The theatre was, of course, a constant resource 
of diversion. The manager was that clever act- 
or and most worthy citizen, Murray. His wife 
was the sister of the great Mrs. Siddons's hus- 
band. There were two ladies, one of the name 
of Siddons, and the other Kemble, who were joint 
occupants with me of a pew in the York Place 
church, where, after leaving the little chapel in 
Carubbers Close, I became a regular attendant. 
It was always in the English church where act- 
ors and actresses congregated ; for the Scotch 
Kirk, with a disgraceful intolerance, would not 



154 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

admit any of the dramatic profession to the priv- 
ileges of its communion. It was in the httle old 
theatre of Edinburgh that Home's "Douglas" 
was first represented, which representation near- 
ly cost the reverend author his pulpit, for he 
barely escaped excommunication ; though he re- 
ceived a severe reprimand from his Church, not 
because he had written a tragedy, but that the 
wicked folk of that abomination of abominations, 
the theatre, had ventured to put it on the stage. 

There was, of course, in a capital city like that 
of Edinburgh, every opportunity for the gratifi- 
cation of individual tastes, Avhatever they might 
be, and this was freely availed of; but it may be 
said of the students generally that they devoted 
themselves with fair attention to the main pur- 
pose of their residence in Edinburgh, without 
being greatly distracted from it by the pursuits 
of pleasure. 

To obtain the degree of doctor of medicine in 
the University of Edinburgh, a course of study 
of four years' duration was required. In each 
year there were two sessions — a winter one of six, 
and a summer one of three months. Attendance 
during the winter sessions was alone obligatory ; 
although two summer sessions, at least, were at- 
tended by almost every student, as being most 
convenient for the pursuits of botany and natu- 



DIFFERENT COURSES OF LECTURES. 155 

ral history. There were eleven different courses 
of lectures upon these various subjects : Chemis- 
try, Anatomy, Physiology, Materia Medica, Prac- 
tice of Medicine, Pathology, Midwifery, Surgery, 
Medical Jurisprudence, Botany, and Natural His- 
tory. All of these courses had to be attended 
or paid for, at least, at the rate of about five 
guineas, or twenty-five dollars each, twice during 
the whole course of study of four years. At- 
tendance was also required for at least six 
months at a laboratory of practical chemistry, 
the dissecting-room, the hospital, and disj^ensary. 
There were three examinations ; the prelimi- 
nary one to test the candidate's knowledge of 
the Latin language, which might be passed at 
any time at the discretion of the student, before 
the first medical examination which took place 
at the end of the third year, and consisted of 
Botany, Natural History, Chemistry, Anatomy, 
and Physiology. The final examination on Ma- 
teria Medica, Practice of Medicine, Pathology, 
Midwifery, Surgery, and Medical Jurisprudence 
was at the end of the fourth vear, when the stu- 
dent, having presented his thesis on some medi- 
cal or cognate subject, and " defended " it, as it 
was technically termed, was admitted to the de- 
gree of M.D. (Doctor of Medicine). These exam- 
inations, always in the presence of at least three 



156 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

of the professors, were in the English language, 
and viva voce; although but a few years before 
I joined the University they had been conduct- 
ed in Latin, as also the " defence " of the thesis, 
which, too, was required to be written in that 
language. 

The " defence " of the thesis, as it was grand- 
ly called, was little more, as far as I recollect, in 
my time than an exchange of courtesies with the 
pi'ofessor, and mutual congratulations upon the 
termination of an affair which had really never 
begun ; in fact, a mere ceremonial which each 
regarded as a bore, and was glad to be rid of. 

No one, of course, was admitted to the second 
without having passed the first examination, nor 
to the third without having passed the second. 
At the close of each examination, the manner in 
which the student had passed it was indicated by 
the marks M (ma^e, badly), SB {satis Jene, suffi- 
ciently well),B (Jene, well), and VB (valde bejie, 
very well). 

As I was fearful what little Latin I had 
brought away from college might give me the 
slip, I hastened to make the best use of it I 
could while it remained in my keeping, so I im- 
mediately offered myself for the first examina- 
tion, which I had no difficulty in passing. I was 
merely called upon to construe a few passages 



WINTER LECTURES. 157 

selected indiscriminately from Cicero's De Na- 
turd Deorum^ Celsius, and Gregory's Conspectus, 
all easy of translation by the average school-boy. 
Daring my first winter session I attended four 
courses of lectures — Anatomy, Physiology, Chem- 
istry, and Materia Medica. The Professor of 
Anatomy was Munro tertius, as he was called — 
being the third of the three Munros, father, son, 
and grandson, who had been professors in the 
same department. 



158 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Mnnro Tertius. — A Nonchalant Professor. — Calling Cards. 
— A Personal Description. — Strange Illustration of Filial 
Aifection. — First Sight of Pickwick. — A Dignified Pro- 
fessor. — Hope. — Resplendent Demonstrations. — Kemp. — 
Compression of Gases. — A Great Chemical Feat. — Antic- 
ipation of Modern Discovery. — The Eclipse of a Man of 
Genius. 

MuNEO primus was great, Munro secundiis 
greater, and Monro tertius the least; so much so, 
in fact, and at such a distance from his two fa- 
mous predecessors, as not to be thought of for a 
moment in comparison with them. Munro ter- 
tius was very proud of his name, as well he 
might be, for it had been everything to him, as 
without it he certainly never would have had his 
professorship, or been held in any consideration 
whatsoever. He was totally inefficient as a lect- 
urer and teacher; and if he had ever known 
much of anatomy, he had forgotten the better 
part of it. 

His lectures were attended but by a very few, 
and would have been by none, had it not been 
for the fun of it. He seemed to be quite indif- 



MUNEO " TERTIUS." 159 

ferent wliether the students came or not. They 
were obliged, he knew, to buy his tickets ; and 
happy, as he put the money in his pocket, in tlie 
consciousness of this fact, he cared not where 
they went for their anatomy, which he must have 
known he himself could not supply. 

Every student, without exception, while com- 
pelled to pay for two courses of Munro's lect- 
ures, where he certainly could learn nothing, took 
lessons, at no small cost, from some private teach- 
er of anatomy, by whom there was a chance of 
being taught something. This created a great 
demand for private anatomical lecturers, of whom 
there were always several holding forth under 
the very eaves of the college buildings to Uni- 
versity students, at the same moment that Mun- 
ro tertius, the appointed professor, was mumbling 
his inaudible words to benches made empty by 
their desertion. 

It was one of the duties of the professors to 
ascertain how far the students were regular in 
their attendance at the classes by "calling cards," 
as it was termed. This should have been done 
twice a week, and on days unexpected by the 
student. Miinro, on the contrary, conscious that 
any enforcement of regularity at his lectures was 
impracticable, always took care to " call cards " 
on the same day, and at the opening of the lect- 



160 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

lire; so the students came in full force at the 
expected time, and after popping into the room 
for a moment, and complying with the order to 
leave their names or cards, popped immediately 
out again, and hurried off to attend to such du- 
ties or pleasures as they might have elsewhere. 

Munro tertius was an odd-looking man, with 
a contracted shrivelled face, small j^eeping eyes, 
short stubby nose, and pursed -up mouth, com- 
pressed, as it were, between an impending wrin- 
kled forehead above, the height of which seemed 
unnaturally great from being lost in the expan- 
sive baldness of the head, and a full double chin 
below, which overlapped his dirty white cravat. 
He was always very carelessly and shabbily 
dressed ; for, though rich, he had the reputa- 
tion of being very mean and miserly. He had 
a large, gross, and flabby person, and moved it 
with a shuflling gait and languid carriage. 

He did everything with an air of indolent in- 
difference, and performed all his duties as a pro- 
fessor in the most perfunctory manner. He hard- 
ly took the pains to articulate his words, and 
drawled out what he had to say in such a muf- 
fled tone that it was scarcely audible. He al- 
v/ays carried in his hand a light willow wand, 
or stick of some kind, with which he carelessly 
pointed out the object of demonstration — a bone, 



STRANGE FILIAL AFFECTION. 161 

a muscle, or whatever it might be — for he never 
deigned to touch them with a finger. He, ordi- 
narily, contented himself with the mere announce- 
ment of the name of an anatomical part, for he 
was either unable or too indolent to describe it, 
or its relations to the human body. 

Seemingly very proud of the museum collected 
by his father, which he had good reason to rev- 
erence — for by its gift to the University he was 
said to have secured his professorship — he was 
very fond of bringing out and displaying its va- 
rious objects. The manner in which he did this 
was very peculiar and amusing. He would point 
with his wand to a crumbling osseous specimen, 
and fondly say, " This was my father's collar- 
bone ;" or, " This was my father's thigh ;" or, 
"This was my father's occiput," or whatever it 
might be. If some anatomical part preserved in 
spirits, he would take up the glass which con- 
tained it, and, stroking it tenderly with his hand, 
evoke the attention of the class with the affec- 
tionate announcement, " This was my father's 
stomach;" or, "This was my father's liver;" or, 
" This was my father's gullet," and so forth. 

This droll resurrection of paternal remains al- 
ways caused, in spite of all due respect for filial 
piety, a general titter among the few students 
scattered about the benches. On one occasion, 

11 



162 MY COLLEGE DAYS, 

I recollect, there was an irresistible burst of -loud 
laughter, which, small in number as we were, 
shook the benches and filled the almost empty 
hall with its sonorous vibrations. The professor 
had brought out an enormous circular glass jar, 
like the tank of an aquarium, in which was float- 
ing, in a sea of alcohol, a great swollen fcetus, 
and, with more than usual filial tenderness in his 
tone, declared, " This was my fatlier's baby !" 

Pastime was the sole object of the student in 
attending Munro's class, and if he did not find it 
in the eccentricities of the professor, he took care 
to provide it for himself. It was common, ac- 
cordingly, to take with him some amusing book, 
or to seek entertainment by keeping up a lively 
conversation with his comrades. Hearing, one 
day, behind me a sound of convulsive tittering, 
which seemed to indicate a great effort to sup- 
press what, at every moment, threatened to burst 
out into loud and uncontrollable laughter, I turn- 
ed round, and, confronting the merry face of one 
of my friends, I asked him the cause of his mer- 
riment. He pointed to a green-covered pamphlet 
before him, and said it was a number of " Pick- 
wick." It was the first time I had ever heard 
of it ; but it was not long after that I, too, in com- 
mon with all the world, became familiar with 
that famous work, which had just begun to be 



THE DIGNIFIED DE. HOPE. 163 

issued, and could appreciate the difficulty that 
my friend must have had in his attempts to keep 
his laughter within the limits of public decorum. 

Among his many manifestations of eccentric- 
ities, Munro tertiics, after marrying and having 
twelve children, took, on the death of his first 
wife, a second ; but of the amount of offspring 
by her there is no record. 

The most dignified personage of the whole 
University was Dr. Hope, the Professor of Chem- 
istry. We all looked upon him with awe and 
admiration, as, just touching with his gloved hand 
the gold-laced cuff of his tall footman, he alight- 
ed at the college gates from his handsome equi- 
page, and walked, with stately step, across the 
quadrangle to the lecture-room. 

He was a vigorous old man of seventy years 
of age, with an eftlorescent face telling of a long 
life of good cheer. His portly frame was attired 
with scrupulous nicety and elegance. He was al- 
ways dressed in black, with a broad-flapped dress- 
coat, knee breeches, silk stockings, and low shoes 
with wide silver buckles. He had nothing of 
the look of a manipulator of retorts and cruci- 
bles, but altogether the air of. a church dignitary, 
replete with rich benefices. 

In his early days he had been regarded as a 
biilliant lecturer, and attracted daily a large class 



164 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

to witness his experimental displays. He never 
made, so far as I know, any substantial contribu- 
tion to the progress of the science he professed 
to teach, and at my time he had already been 
left far in the rear by his rapidly advancing 
contemporaries, seeming hardly conscious of the 
fruitful labors of Berzelius, Dumas, and Faraday. 
He continued faitlifully in the track of the old 
chemists of half a century before, and startled us 
tyros with the same resplendent demonstrations 
of the effects of chemical combination, and the 
evolution of heat and cold, as those with which 
he had astonished our predecessors for the pre- 
vious fifty years. 

He took great pleasure in making experimen- 
tal exhibitions on a large scale, and of a showy, 
obvious kind, being more anxious, apparently, to 
surprise the senses than to awaken the intelli- 
gence of his youthful and inexperienced audi- 
ence. The well-known rapidity of the combina- 
tion of iron and sulphur, with the brilliant effect 
which ensues, he would illustrate with an enor- 
mous mass of red-hot iron as big as a crow-bar, 
and a roll of sulphur as large and thick as his 
arm. When he brought the two together in 
contact, and the heated particles from the quick- 
dissolving metal flew off in a shower of splendid 
scintillations, and the whole room was in a glow, 



AN ACTIVE ASSISTANT. 1G5 

illuminating each face, there was none whicli 
glistened with more brightness, and exhibited 
more delight, than that of the old professor. He 
would cause mercury to be frozen by the hun- 
dred pounds at a time, and exhibit, with an air 
of great self-satisfaction, large vases, forms, and 
figures of the congealed metal. 

Hope was very fortunate in the possession of 
a very clever and active assistant, without whose 
aid the old man, already very shaky, would have 
been unable to indulge in his favorite exhibition 
of fireworks, and other entertaining illustrations 
of chemical action. 

Kemp, Dr. Hope's assistant, was of very hum- 
ble birth, and his tone, speech, manner, and ap- 
pearance all indicated his low origin; but he was 
a man of unquestionable genius. He was the 
first to prove by experiment the compressibility 
of many of the gases. He had a whole arsenal 
of bent glass tubes, containing these in their 
liquid foi-m, which he used to handle and dis- 
play with a fearlessness w^hich he did not impart 
to the rest of us when made aware of the force 
imprisoned in those brittle vessels. There was 
explosive power enough, had it once, by hazard, 
gained a vent, to blow up the whole college 
structure and every soul in it, and leave its ruins 
the scene of a catastrophe more fatal, if less 



16G MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

memorable, than that which had given the site 
of Kirk o' Fields, upon which the University 
was built, its tragic historical interest as the 
spot where Bothwell and his royal paramour 
had murdered Darnley. 

Kemp's great feat was the conversion of car- 
bonic acid gas into a solid by means of some 
enormous and incalculable amount of pressure. 
He often repeated the experiment with no un- 
usual precaution, as far as I recollect, beyond 
carrying his apparatus for the purpose into the 
open quadrangle, possibly with the view, in case 
of an explosion, that there might be more space 
for the scattei'ing of the remains of its unfail- 
ing victims. His apparatus consisted of an iron 
sphere of enormous thickness, and of the size 
and capacity of a keg or small barrel, divided 
transversely into two equal parts, in one of which 
there was a nozzle with a stop-cock. After the 
materials for generating the gas were placed in 
one of these hemispheres, the other was set upon 
it like a lid, and fastened closely and firmly in po- 
sition by several powerful brass nuts and screws. 

After it was supposed a sufficient quantity of 
the gas had been generated and immensely com- 
pressed by its own elastic atmosphere, kept from 
expansion by the strong vessel in which it was 
confined, the cock was suddenly opened, and the 



THE TELEGRAPH ANTICIPATED. 1G7 

carbonic acid gas burst forth in a shower of 
white particles or flakes. This we collected and 
rolled together like a snowball, but soon dropped 
it from the hand, for it seemed, after holding it 
awhile, to bite the flesh like a nip of sharp frost. 
This experiment has, no doubt, been frequently 
repeated since those days, but in my time it was 
so rare that chemists came from various parts 
of the world to Kemp's laboratory to witness it. 

Kemp had a wire of five miles in length coil- 
ed over the ceiling of his lecture-room, through 
which he often passed a current of electricity ; 
and, bidding us remark the rapidity and sureness 
of its passage, would say that here was a means 
of transmitting intelligence between points, how- 
ever mutually distant, from one end of Europe 
to the other, and, in fact, around the whole earth ; 
for, as he said, no water — river, lake, or even the 
ocean itself — could interrupt the course of the 
swift, subtle, penetrating electric fluid. He never 
failed to add that some of us would live to see 
it practically applied for this purpose. He thus 
anticipated telegraphic communication by means 
of electricity, now so familiar to us all, long bcr 
fore any one had conceived the idea of its possir 
bility. 

We students, and every one else, regarded 
Kemp at that time as a wild enthusiast, and siiSr 



IGS MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

pected that his mind was distempered by his 
increasing habit of indulgence in strong drink; 
which, alas ! daily becoming more evident, final- 
ly brought him to ruin and disgrace, and thus 
early extinguished a genius which gave great 
promise to science. 

Kemp delivered a course of what he termed 
Practical Chemistry, which we all attended. The 
price was much less than that of the lectures of 
the dignified Professor Hope, but the value in- 
finitely greater. What we learned of chemistry 
was not acquired in the great hall above, where 
the stately and prescribed University lecturer so 
magniloquently pronounced his commonplaces, 
but in the dark, diminutive, stone -paved room 
below, where the uncouth, half-educated, and oft- 
besotted little Scotchman blurted out, in his rude 
brogue, the inspirations of genius. 



PROFESSOR ALISOJSr. 1G9 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Professor Alison. — The Good Physician. — "Our Doctor." 
— Robust and Gentle. — Sir Robert Christison. — Hard 
Worker. — Powers of Endurance. — Personal Appearance. 
— Sir William Hamilton. — x\uthor of "Cyril Thornton." 
— Hundreds of Skulls. — A Death-blow to Phrenology. — 
Professor Wilson. — His Works. — Personal Appearance. 
— As a Lecturer. — The Dogs. — How a Professor was 
Appointed. — Pillans. 

The professor of Physiology, whose class I at- 
tended, was the brother of Archibald Alison, the 
historian, and son of the Rev. Mr. Alison, the 
author of the celebrated essay on " Taste." Dr. 
William P. Alison, the professor, was a writer of 
no little merit himself, and the author of a work 
on Physiology, which in those remote days, be- 
fore the science had emerged from the misty at- 
mosphere of speculative conjecture into the clear 
light of experimental research, was regarded as 
an ingenious and suggestive help to theoretical 
inquiry. 

He had a far nobler fame, however, than that 
of writer or author, though from its very nature 
it was restricted to narrower bounds. He was 



170 MY colleg:e days. 

known and beloved by all the poor and wretch- 
ed of Edinburgh, by whom he was affectionately 
termed " Oar Doctor." One of the most emi- 
nent physicians of his day, the great and the rich 
eagerly sought his advice, and would gladly have 
secured it at any cost ; but he scorned their hon- 
orariums and rewards, and devoted his services 
to the humble and the destitute. He was con- 
stantly in the grimy " wynds " and filthy " closes " 
of the old town, the crowded haunts of disease 
and misery, exercising all his skill to heal the 
sick, and the full resources of his benevolence 
and generosity to encourage and support the 
needy and despairing. 

Dr. Alison's poor dependents tracked him all 
over the city, following him to his home, and to 
the college halls. The door of his lecture-room 
was daily besieged by a great throng of these 
miserable creatures —men, women, and children 
— who, as soon as he made his appearance, sur- 
rounded and clung to him so closely that it was 
impossible for him to move a step. Nor did he 
exhibit the least sign of impatience, or show any 
desire to avoid their importunities; but, compos- 
ing them with a few gentle words, gave each one 
an attentive hearing, and satisfying, apparently, 
the behests of all, sent them away hap[)ier and 
more contented for the interview. 



PRACTICAL BENEVOLENCE. I7l 

The door-steps of his house were perpetually 
beset in the same way by a crowd of poor peo- 
ple awaiting his going in or coming out. He 
always went afoot; for he gave away so much 
of his income that he could not afford to keep 
a carriage, notwithstanding his large resources 
from his professorship and a considerable pri- 
vate fortune. He was as great a favorite with 
the students as with the poor people, and when- 
ever any one of them was taken seriously ill, he 
was sure to send for Professor Alison, and he 
always came; for there was no awaiting fee to 
exclude him from a claim to the good doctor's 
services. 

Dr. Alison was one of the physicians of the 
Infirmary, and his presence in the ward which 
he daily visited was like a radiance from heav- 
en, bringing hope and patience to every sufferer. 
His looks corresponded with his deeds, and ev- 
ery feature of his face beamed with an expres- 
sion of benevolence. He was a large, tall man, 
over six feet in height, with broad shoulders nnd 
ruddy cheeks, and every indication, in fact, of a 
strong body and good digestion. He had a pe- 
culiarly gentle voice ; and to hear, as he bent over 
the bed of a patient, upon whose head his broad 
hand was softly laid, his habitual words, "My 
poor woman," or, " My good man," as it might 



172 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

be, was as if a chord of sweet music had been 
touched, awakening all the tender emotions of 
the heart. 

The most earnest, hard- working man in the 
University was Dr., now Sir Robert Christison, 
the professor of Materia Medica. Besides giving 
his regular course of lectures, he was an indefat- 
igable experimentalist in the laboratory ; one of 
the attendant physicians of the Infirmary ; an ac- 
tive member of the Royal Society, where he fre- 
quently read papers ; the president of the Phar- 
maceutical Society; a public analyst; and an elab- 
orate author, of the excellence of whose works 
the " Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia," and his stand- 
ard book on Poisons, are unquestioned proofs. 

His personal appearance indicated the ener- 
getic spirit and laborious life of the man. His 
body was worn bare almost to the skeleton ; his 
face was shrivelled, and had a bilious tint and 
haggard expression. He had a remarkable sus- 
ceptibility of disease. He could not enter the 
fever wards of the hospital without catching that 
malignant typhus whose victims always abound- 
ed there. After having been laid prostrate by 
six or more attacks in succession, he was finally 
forced by his colleagues, though against his own 
strenuous protest, to withdraw forever from all 
attendance on patients afflicted with the disease. 



WHOLESOME EFFECT OF WORK. 173 

He was of the American rather than British 
type — eager, nervous, thin, angular, tendinous, 
and always on the go. With this fihny struct- 
ure and apparently exhausting activity of mind 
and body, he combined, as is not seldom found 
in our countrymen of the same form and tem- 
perament, a power of endurance for which no 
trial seemed too great. 

Sir Robert Christison was living a few months 
ago, a hale old man of ninety years of age — a 
striking example of the wholesome effect of 
work in promoting health and prolonging hu- 
man existence. It is hoped he may be living 
still. 

Though having all due respect for the men of 
eminence in my own profession, I took, I must 
confess, more interest in some members of the 
faculty of the University of wider celebrity. 
There was the professor of Logic, Sir William 
Hamilton, who at that time, however, had not 
acquired the reputation he has since, of the 
greatest metaphysician of our age. 

I do not recollect ever having heard him lect- 
ure ; for there was nothing in his subject, or in 
his reputed manner of treating it, greatly to at- 
tract me at that early period of my life. At the 
time, I think, I was more interested in him from 
the fact of his beino- the brother of Colonel Ham- 



174 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

ilton, the author of that interesting novel, " Cy- 
ril Thornton," and of a rather saucy book on the 
United States, where, in the more sensitive days 
of our immaturity, he was classed with the Trol- 
lopes, Fiddlers, and others whom we then re- 
garded as critics who had reached the height 
of impudence, in venturing to say frankly what 
they thought of us and our country. 

I saw, however, in the class-room of the pro- 
fessor of physiology, an interesting reminder of 
Sir William Hamilton, who used the same hall 
for the delivery of his lectures. Behind the ros- 
trum there was a number of shelves fastened to 
the wall, upon which were ranged the hundreds 
of skulls which gave such Aveight to the death- 
blow that Sir William Hamilton dealt, in his 
famous article in the Edinburgh Hevieic, to the 
pseudo- science of Gall and Spurzheim. Each 
one of the skulls had an artificial opening above 
the sockets of the eyes, exhibiting the cavity call- 
ed the frontal sinus, and showing that such space 
existed between the two plates of bone which 
formed the receptacle of the brain, that its con- 
volutions could not possibly correspond with any 
prominences which might be found on the ex- 
terior surface or plate of the skull. The idea, 
therefore, that an examination of the head could 
indicate any special development of separate 



ADMIRATION FOR TROFESSOR WILSON. 1V5 

parts of the brain was thus proved to be mani- 
festly absurd. 

There was no one I was so eager to see as 
John Wilson, professor of Moral Philosophy and 
Political Economy in the University — the Chris- 
topher North of Blackwood — then in the full 
vigor of life and genius, and at the height of re- 
nown ; for I had, in common with all my com- 
rades who possessed the least literary sympathy, 
a strong youthful admiration for the author of 
the luxuriant verses of the " Isle of Palms," and 
the pathetic stories of the "Lights and Shadows 
of Scottish Life ;" while I held in reverential awe 
the Jvpiter Tonans of literature, who wielded 
the critical thunder-bolts of" Old Ebony." 

I was then too young, perhaps, to fully ap- 
preciate the masculine vigor and high-spiced hu- 
mor with which life, manners, and literature were 
treated in the JVoctes Ambrosiance/ and as I have 
arisen with advanced age to a more capable ap- 
preciation of these, my taste, I must confess, has 
more and more rebelled against the virulence of 
political partisanship, the coarse jocularity, and 
the flavor of sensual indulgence which always 
accompany and degrade them. While admiring 
the sympathetic insight and generous toleration 
of Christopher North in many of the later pa- 
pers of his editorship, I find them so smothered 



I'ZG MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

in rhapsody as to be difficult and hardly worth 
the effort of resuscitation. 

There was no difficulty for any one living in 
Edinburgh to see Professor Wilson; for, if he 
was anywhere within the field of vision, the eye 
was sure to be attracted and fixed upon him. I 
saw hira almost every day going to his class 
and coming from it. I can well recall his gigan- 
tic figure striding along the North and South 
bridges at such a pace that his three or four 
little short-legged Scotch terriers, which always 
followed at his heels, run as fast as they might, 
could hardly keep up with him. 

Professor Wilson has been often described, 
but never so accurately as in this hasty sketch 
of him by Dickens : " A tall, burly, handsome 
man of eight-and-forty (1841), with a gait like 
O'Connell's, the bluest eyes you can imagine, and 
long hair — longer than mine" (says Dickens) — 
" falling down in a wild way, under the broad 
brim of his hat. He had on a surtout coat; a 
blue -checked shirt, the collar standing up, and 
kept in its place with a wisp of black necker- 
chief; no waistcoat; and a large pocket-handker- 
chief thrust into his breast, which was all broad 
and open. At his heels followed a wiry, sharp- 
eyed, shaggy devil of a terrier, dogging his steps 
as he went slashing up and down, now with one 



PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 177 

man beside him, now with another, and now quite 
alone, but always at a fast, rolling pace, with his 
head in the air, and his eyes as wide open as he 
could get them. I guessed it was Wilson, and 
it was. A bright, clean-complexioned, mountain- 
looking fellow, he looks as though he had just 
come down from the Highlands, and had never 
in his life taken pen in hand." 

There is not the least exaggeration in this de- 
scription by Dickens of the carelessness of Wil- 
son's dress. He always looked to me as if he 
had slept in his clothes, and, having been sud- 
denly awakened, had been forced to hurry away, 
without having time to put them and his person 
in order. 

I used occasionally to follow the professor to 
his lecture-room, where, as he ascended the ros- 
trum, he was greeted by his large class with such 
demonstrations of welcome as evinced the hearty 
and sincere affection by which he was regarded 
by every student. He evidently appreciated this 
daily expression of fondness, and always acknowl- 
edged it with a kindly smile, and a gentle depre- 
catory shake of his long yellow locks. 

Silence immediately ensued among the stu- 
dents, each one of whom seemed eager to catch 
every sound of their favorite professor's voice. 
He took out of one of his side-pockets a tumbled 

12 



178 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

conglomeration of manuscripts, with no more reg- 
ularity of form and order than so much waste 
paper, and, throwing them down scattered before 
him, began to hold forth. What he said he evi- 
dently did not read from the writing lying about, 
for he never looked at, and only touched it to 
give it an occasional crumple with his hand, in 
the course of the energy of his action. He knew 
but little,! fancy, of moral philosophy, and much 
less of political economy ; but his lectures, pleas- 
antly discursive, w^ere always interesting. His 
little terriers, in the mean time, were crouching 
under his desk ; and sometimes the professor, in 
the stir of his eloquence moving heedlessly about, 
would happen to tread upon the leg or tail of 
one of the poor little creatures, and a sharp yelp 
would be heard, piercing at once some oratori- 
cal wind-bag in course of inflation by the lecturer, 
and causing a sudden collapse and universal mer- 
riment, in which Wilson would join as heartily 
as the rest. 

Wilson was entirely indebted to political par- 
tisanship for his appointment of professor. No 
one ever regarded him as a fit successor of Du- 
gald Stewart, and a proper teacher of moral phi- 
losophy, unless his rabid Toryism and free-and- 
easy convivial habits were deemed qualifications. 
His intimate associates must have laughed in 



PROFESSOR PILLANS. 179 

their sleeves at his appointment as a good joke. 
Walter Scott, his friend and a brother Tory, when 
promising him all his great influence, felt it nec- 
essary to exhort him to "eschew sack, and live 
cleanly." 

Among the professors was Pillans, of the Hu- 
manity — the Scotch for Latin class. He was a 
painstaking, high-minded teacher, who did not 
merit in any way the mud with which Byron, 
to gratify a boyish grudge when at Harrow, be- 
spattered him in this dirty line of his "English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers," 

"And paltry Pillans traduce his friend." 



180 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Close of Winter Session. — Vacations. — To Glasgow by 
Canal. — A Jolly Archdeacon. — Glenarbuck. — Blantyre 
House. — A Noble Fee. — A Tragic End. — A Winter Voy- 
age. — Illness at Sea. — A Gentle Seafaring Man. — The 
North Atlantic in Winter. — A Victim. — Hoisting Sail. — 
Detection. — Arrival in New York. — A Mitigated Wel- 
come. 

After the close of the winter session of six 
months, I had always half of the year to dispose 
of. I usually occupied three months of this in 
attending the summer session of the University, 
and the rest of the time in various holiday ex- 
cursions. There were two friends of mine, then 
bachelors — one a retired merchant from N"ew 
York, and the other his brother, an eminent law- 
yer — who always offered and gave me a hearty 
welcome. I spent much of my leisure time with 
them ; now in their luxurious town residence in 
Blythswood Square, in Glasgow ; and again at a 
picturesque country-place they rented for several 
summers. 

I used often to go to Glasgow by the canal, 
on which there was a passenger boat, which, by 



ARCHDEACON WILLIAMS. 181 

frequent relays of post-horses and postilions, was 
able to compete with the fast mail-coach between 
Glasgow and Edinburgh. The railway has, of 
course, long since made this an impossible mode 
of travel for modern impatience, but in my day 
it was a favorite, and really a very agreeable, 
mode of journeying. The boats were handsome- 
ly fitted up, and the company was always the 
best, of which the freedom of communication and 
ease of movement permitted a full enjoyment. I 
recollect having once, as my fellow -passengers, 
Archdeacon Williams and his charming family 
of daughters. These bright, black -eyed girls 
were in great glee, and amused themselves pluck- 
ing wild plants and flowers from the banks of 
the canal as we rapidly skimmed them in our 
fast-going boat. They were good botanists, and 
had the. name ready for every insignificant grass 
or weed they saw or caught, but it was always 
the English one; for their father, they said, for- 
bade them using the scientific Latin terms as too 
pedantic for young ladies. While the daughters 
were thus occupied in botanizing, and I in ob- 
serving them, there was suddenly a great burst 
of laughter from the father, who sat reading in 
the bow of the boat. It shook our tremulous 
vessel, and fairly rippled the water with its 
hearty reverberations. On ascertaining the cause 



182 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

of this uproarious raerriment, I found that the 
archdeacon was reading " Pickwick ;" and, show- 
ing me the illustration by Phiz, where old Wel- 
ler is pointing significantly with his thumb over 
his left shoulder to Samivel's sweetheart, the pret- 
ty chamber-maid, Mary, he imitated the gesture, 
and burst out again in an uncontrollable fit of 
laughter. This was the second time that my at- 
tention had been drawn to a book I had not yet 
read, by a public manifestation of the immense 
delight it gave. 

Archdeacon Williams was the author of rather 
a dull book — Life of Alexander the Great; but 
Professor Wilson, of Blackwood, always spoke 
of him as the most learned and wittiest of arch- 
deacons; he certainly was the joUiest — a stout, 
broad -faced, merry parson, whose cheerfulness 
not even the cocked hat and sombre suit of 
clerical black he wore could repress. He had 
been a great friend of Sir Walter Scott, and had 
charge of his son Charles when a parish clergy- 
man in Wales. When I knew him, he was the 
head-master of the Edinburgh Academy, which 
the Tories and aristocrats had established as a 
rival to the democratic High School. 

After spending a few days in Glasgow, I ac- 
companied my friends to their country -place. 
This was Glenarbuck, situated on the right bank 



BLAXTYRE HOUSE. 183 

of the Clyde, about ten miles from the city of 
Glasgow. The house was a pretty Italian villa, 
with a considerable sweep of varied park -like 
grounds, the lawns of which spread almost down 
to the river, while the rich growth of wood, shad- 
ing the sides and the rear of the dwelling, ex- 
tended in the distance behind to the hills which 
bordered Loch Lomond, and hid it from view. 
Within a few steps from the park gate rose the 
old Castle of Dumbarton. It and the great rock 
upon which it is built almost touched, with their 
deep, jagged shades of crag and buttress, the 
smooth lawns of Glenarbuck. The place is now 
the property of Lord Blantyre, and was, I be- 
lieve, a wedding-gift from the Duke of Suther- 
land, whose daughter he married. In my day, so 
great was the seclusion of the house, that I have 
often seen of a morning, from the bow-window 
of the breakfast-parlor, wild deer, whose home 
was among the hills, bounding across the lawn, 
and even at times pausing to nibble the tender 
grass. 

Directly opposite, on the other side of the 
Clyde, was the imposing structure of Blantyre 
House, which, with its great park of century-old 
trees, and wide pastures covering a long stretch 
of the bank of the river, and coming down to its 
very brink, presented such an oasis of refreshing 



1 84 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

beauty that it always attracted and fascinated 
the eye of the traveller as he passed, wearied 
with an almost endless scene of country blasted 
and stained with the fire and smoke of human 
energy. 

From the woods in the rear of Blantyre House 
rose a church spire, and by the side of it the 
manse— a more pretentious structure than most 
Scotch parsonages. In it lived two of my fel- 
low-students. Their father had been a humble 
rural practitioner of medicine, but had the good 
fortune to be called in an emei'gency to attend 
a daughter of the great house of Blantyre. The 
case was pronounced by the most erudite of the 
profession to be consumption, and of a desperate 
nature ; but the country doctor, who was a man 
of plain common -sense, thought otherwise, and 
undertook to cure it. He succeeded. His treat- 
ment was simple enough — consisting only, it is 
said, of beefsteak and porter; but the doctor 
was well rewarded, receiving as his fee the hand 
and fortune of his noble patient. 

His lordship of Blantyre thinking it deroga- 
tory to his rank and dignity to have a humble 
practitioner of medicine for a brother-in-law, or 
the doctor himself concluding that in the en- 
joyment of the transcendent fee he had earned 
there was nothing beyond to hope for in his pro- 



ox THE ATLANTIC. 185 

fessioiijit was resolved that the pestle and mor- 
tar should be laid aside, and he take to pound- 
ing the pulpit. He, accordingly, became a cler- 
gyman of the Established Church of Scotland ; 
and receiving from his noble brother-in-law the 
gift of the living on the Blantyre estate, and ex- 
panding and beautifying the manse by means of 
his wife's fortune, was thus possessed of the lit- 
tle kirk and comfortable manse, whose spire and 
roof were to be seen peeping out of the woods 
across the water. 

His brother-in-law. Lord Blantyre, met with a 
tragic fate. While travelling on the Continent, 
he took up his quarters for a short time in a 
hotel in Paris, and one day hearing a tumult in 
the street, he opened his window, and, looking 
out, was shot dead. It was on the first of the 
three revolutionary days of July, 1830. 

The vacation being over, and the winter ses- 
sion of the University beginning, I should, in the 
ordinary course, have gone to Edinburgh ; but 
suffering somewhat from ill-health — the result of 
my many irregularities of diet and regimen, and 
other sins against nature during the early days 
of my collegiate life — and being greatly afflicted 
with home-sickness, I had sought and obtained 
permission to go to New York. 

I sailed from Liveri^ool, in the packet -ship 



186 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

Europe^ Captain Edward Marshall, early in No- 
vember. I began the voyage in great glee, for 
I was a good sailor, and did not dread the North 
Atlantic Ocean, even in its tumultuous winter 
humors ; and w^as, moreover, cheered by the near- 
ing though distant prospect of my home. For 
the first ten days everything seemed pleasant 
enough, notwithstanding the constant succession 
of gales and storms, which, blowing in our teeth, 
made the expectation of eating my plum -pud- 
ding in New York almost hopeless. 

On the eleventh day of the voyage I was suf- 
fering from a raging fever, and in a week after 
it was manifest that I had an attack of small- 
pox. Fortunately, there were but few cabin- 
passengers on board, although the steerage was 
crowded. Great alarm, however, prevailed, and 
it became a matter of serious deliberation how 
to dispose of me ; for the contagious disease I 
had might spread, and, becoming general, affect 
not only the passengers but the crew, and dis- 
able them from working the ship. They dis- 
cussed whether it would be better to deposit me 
where I should be a fellow-lodger with the cow, 
in a compartment of the long-boat, amidships, 
made vacant by the daily slaughter of sheep and 
swine, rapidly disappearing in saddles of mutton 
and legs of pork at the cabin table; or in the 



TERRIBLE SUFFERING. 187 

captain's gig, hanging at the poop, where, as I 
tossed, suspended in the air, I might be venti- 
lated by every breeze and gale, and washed and 
purified by perpetual showers of spray and fre- 
quent dashes of the stormy stern-chasers. 

As I grew sicker and sicker, I felt more and 
more indifferent as to the result of their delib- 
erations ; and the only request I made, though 
none more unlikely to be granted whatever their 
promises, was that, in case of my death, my body 
should not be thrust into a potato-sack, weighted 
with coal, and hurled into the sea. It is curious 
that, during the worst paroxysms of my disease, 
I was less anxious about the cure of my sick 
body than of the disposition of my dead carcass. 
Perhaps it was that I desj^aired of the one, while 
I fondly hoped that there was some chance that 
my wishes might control the other. 

It was humanely resolved at last that, as there 
were no female passengers, the lady's cabin should 
be cleared of the freight and stores with which 
it had been crammed, and prepared for my re- 
ception. Here, accordingly, I was deposited, and 
lay prostrate for many a day, with a disease 
which made me not only loathsome to others 
but to myself. My pains and soreness of body 
were greatly increased by the motion of the ves- 
sel, every pitch, roll, and lurch of which seemed 



188 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

to rend apart my flesh, and tear it out by piece- 
meal. 

There was no surgeon or physician on board, 
and I, a student of but a year, only knew enough 
of the science of medicine to be frightened at 
my condition. There was, however, an old gen- 
tleman among the cabin passengers who, having 
had the small-pox, felt no fear ; and being a deal- 
er in drugs and paints, or something of the kind, 
thought himself, as the nearest approximation to 
a doctor, entitled to treat me. He had, unfortu- 
nately, he said, bat I think fortunately, brought 
with him no assortment of the articles he dealt 
in ; but fastening on the jalap and laudanum bot- 
tles among the ship's medicines, he dosed me 
alternately with the one and the other. It was 
hazardous treatment; but as his opiates were 
strong and frequent, my sensibility to the pains 
of the drug with which he was drenching me, 
and of the disease, was much dulled, and, in spite 
of all, I got well. 

The captain, a rough man to look at, with his 
face deeply seamed and quilted with the scars of 
the small-pox, and regarded by his officers and 
sailors as a severe task-mastei", whose rude voice 
of command and angry utterances of censure I 
could hear even where I lay, rising above the 
noise of the boisterous wind and the rattle of 



A GENTLE SKIPPER. 189 

the shrouds, was as kind and gentle to me as a 
woman during my whole illness. He not only 
came to see me almost hourly each day, but re- 
mained frequently a long time by the side of my 
bunk, giving me an account of the progress of 
the vessel, and the occurrences on board. On 
Sunday he never failed to bring with him his 
Bible and read to me a chapter, although no one 
in the ship ever suspected that he had the least 
inclination to pious sentiments ; but I am per- 
suaded that he was a sincere Christian in faith, 
as he proved himself to be in works — in his con- 
duct toward me. 

As I lay in my bunk tossing and suffering, the 
ship, at the mercy of the constant winter storms, 
kept beating about the ocean, and, with perpet- 
ual head winds, sailing in every direction but on 
the right course. The sailors had a hard time 
of it; and after they had been for eight hours 
or more at a stretch on the yard-arm reefing a 
sail, during a dreadfully cold and stormy day of 
December, one poor fellow, exhausted with fa- 
tigue and benumbed by frost, let go his hold 
and dropped into the sea. He was a Maltese, 
and, fresh from the calm and milder regions of 
the Mediterranean, was unable to endure the 
boisterous winds and severe cold of the North- 
ern Atlantic in the winter-time. 



190 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

Thus we were driven about with hardly a sin- 
gle hour's fair breeze, day after day, week after 
week, and even month after month ; for, although 
we left Liverpool early in November, we did not 
arrive in New York until late in December. We 
took fifty-five days to cross the Atlantic — a pas- 
sage that is now not unfrequently made in eight. 

I felt perfectly well on my arrival, but the dis- 
ease still showed its full ugly efflorescence on my 
face, made still more visible by the frosty winter 
air. In spite of the great studding-sails I had 
hoisted by the advice of the captain, in the shape 
of a very high and broad standing collar, then the 
fashion, raised to my ears and extended beyond 
both of my cheeks, I found that I had not suc- 
ceeded in concealing my identity; for as soon 
as I made my appearance on deck, the first time 
since ray illness, just as we were about to land, 
the throng of steerage passengers, who had not 
seen me before, stared with amazement ; and I 
overheard them remarking to each other, "There's 
the gintelman, shure, who had the pock." 

My satisfaction at arriving was much dimin- 
ished by the surprise with which each old friend 
looked me in the face; and while it w^as natural 
enough that none was over-eager to take me by 
the hand, I felt sad, for I seemed to be thus de- 
prived of my due share of welcome. In a few 



MYSELF AGAIN. 191 

months, however, I was myself agaui, with hard- 
ly any indication left of the ugly disease, and 
what there was, my friends politely assured me, 
only improved my former appearance, thus sug- 
gesting an inference certainly not very flattering 
to my previous looks. 



192 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

My First Visit to Washington. — Appearance of the Capital. 
— The Old Gadsby's. — A Visit from Ogden Hoffman. — A 
Sight of Daniel Webster. — The Hon. Edward Stanley. — 
A Call upon Van Buren. — The Joke of the Treasury. — 
Jesuits' College. — Wine for Boys. — Alexandria. — Horse- 
back liide to Mount Vernon. — A Deserted Home. — Ee- 
turn to Edinburgh. — An Unfortunate Petition. — First 
Medical Examination. 

The most memorable incident of my visit to 
the United States was a trip to Washington — 
the first time in my life that I had been there. 
Evert A. Duyckinck, my dearest friend, from 
his early youth to the last day of his life, then 
a young man of twenty years of age, like myself, 
was my companion. It was at his suggestion, 
in fact, that I made the journey. 

It was in the spring of 1838 that we set out; 
and in those days, with no railways to speed the 
passenger on, and no Pullman car to rock him to 
sleep and foi-getfulness of time and worry, the 
tedious travelling by stage-coach and steamboat 
made a trip of several hundred miles an enter- 



LIFE IN WASHINGTON. 193 

prise of some moment. With our youthful spir- 
its and sense of freedom, however, there was no 
weariness too heavy for our endurance, and not 
an hour passed during our whole journey that 
did not bring with it an addition to our over- 
flowing glee and happiness. 

Washington appeared to me to have much 
more of the look of a provincial town then; al- 
though even now it has by no means a very 
striking metropolitan aspect. Gadsby's Hotel, 
where we put up, of course, as every one else did 
— for it was the only inn in the city, I believe — 
was a great hostelry of the Southern sort, such 
as used to be found in Richmond, and other large 
cities of the slave States. It was built on the 
four sides of a large square, upon which opened 
a range of interior galleries, three or four stories 
high. A railing guarded these from the open 
court-yard on the one side ; and on the other were 
the entrances to all the apartments or bedrooms. 

These galleries were the favorite resorts of the 
members of Congress, and other habitues of the 
hotel ; and in their frequent moments of leisure 
they were generally to be seen, if not in the bar- 
rooms, here poised upon their chairs with their 
heels upon the railing, puffing cigars or chewing 
their quids, and alternately sipping mint-juleps 
and squirting tobacco-juice over the toes of their 

13 



194 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

boots down into the court-yard, apparently care- 
less on what sooty head of the despised race (the 
negro slaves who were always thronging in and 
out below) it might fall. 

It was in one of these galleries, I recollect, that 
Ogden Hoffman, then member of Congress from 
New York, to whom we had brought a letter of 
introduction, returned our visit. He was a jo- 
vial, hearty man, and, young as we were, made 
" hail fellow, well met" with us at once, and soon 
had his feet upon the rail too, his cigar in his 
mouth, and his mint-julep at his side. He was 
very chatty about Congressional men and affairs ; 
but the only thing I can recollect was, to use his 
own words, " Daniel Webster is facile princeps?'' 

We saw this great man, but did not have an 
opportunity of hearing him speak in the Senate, 
of which he was a member. He appeared to me 
then, as he always did whenever I saw him, as 
an apparition rather than a reality. There was 
certainly nothing ethereal about him. He was 
substantial enough, with his massiveness of struct- 
ure, his great height, his Atlantean shoulders, his 
ponderous head, with its lofty forehead overhang- 
ing those wonderful cavernous eyes of his ! but 
w^ithal he had a spectral look. He shed around 
such an air of irapressiveness — of awe, I may say 
— as he stood grand in the solitary distinction of 



EDWARD STANLEY. 195 

his gigantic form, or stalked with majestic step 
among the ordinary men and women who flut- 
tered about, that it was difficult to regard hipi 
as other people who dwindled in his presence, 
while he in comparison seemed to rise to a su- 
perhuman height. 

We had also a letter of introduction to Ed- 
ward Stanley, a bright young member of Con- 
gress from North Carolina. He was then rejoic- 
ing in his triumph over Wise of Virginia in a 
conflict of personal invective, which in those days 
was regarded as creditable to the spirit of hon- 
orable gentlemen and applauded, but w^hich, it is 
hoped, the better taste of the present times con- 
demns, and will not tolerate. A duel was thought 
probable, but by the intervention of friends a 
hostile meeting was averted. Stanley, however, 
was regarded as a young hero, who dared to pre- 
sent a bold front to his formidable antagonist, 
and for having, though it was his first appear- 
ance in the Congressional arena, showed a won- 
derful readiness in fight, striking blow for blow, 
and giving, at least, as much as he received. 

Stanley was a pleasant companion, and very 
kind and attentive to us. He took us to the 
White House, and introduced us to Martin Van 
Buren, then President of the United States, who, 
in his usual bland manner, upon my being pre- 



196 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

sented to him, said, " Pray, Mr. Jones, to what 
family of the Joneses in New York do you be- 
long ?" He might as well, I thought, have asked 
me to what branch of the human race I apper- 
tained. He had made a mistake in my name, 
and I merely answered by correcting it. This 
is the only circumstance I can recall of an inter- 
view which was, of course, brief and formal. 

Mr. Stanley's wife and a niece of his — a Miss 
Armistead, the daughter of General Armistead — 
were with him in Washington, and we all paid a 
visit together to the Treasury, to behold its won- 
ders. We were shown a diamond-mounted gold 
snuffbox, among other handsome and valuable 
gifts which had been presented by foreign po- 
tentates to American officials, who are allowed 
to take but not to keep presents. They, accord- 
ingly, deliver them up to the Secretary of the 
Treasury, who stores them away in his depart- 
ment. When it came to Miss Armistead's turn 
to inspect the box, the official in charge, a gallant 
old gray-haired gentleman, after showing the dia- 
monds on the outside, opened and displayed the 
glistening interior of gold, saying to her, "You 
will see there the two most magnificent brilliants, 
look !" Miss Armistead was a very handsome 
dark brunette, and her pair of beautiful, spark- 
ling black eyes deserved the compliment; and I 



THE JESUITS' COLLEGE. 197 

must say that I felt my gallantry wounded when 
her uncle, Mr. Stanley, blurted out to us as we 
left, "That old fool always says the same thing 
whenever he shows that box to a lady, be she 
young or old, ugly or handsome !" I wonder if 
it is still the standing joke of the Treasury, as 
it was half a century ago ! 

We made a visit to the Jesuits' College at 
Georgetown. It was during the vacation, and 
we found no one but a jolly priest in charge, 
who took us all about, showing us the refectory, 
the kitchen, the dormitories, the library, with its 
illuminated missals and foreign- looking books 
bound in vellum, and the grounds. After in- 
specting the terraces, the conservatories, and flow- 
er-beds, we came to a large trellis covered with 
vines, then bursting all over into buds, and giving 
promise of a plentiful harvest of fruit. " What 
do you do with the grapes?" one of us asked. 
" Why, we make wine of them," he said ; " but" 
— and after a pause, and a very significant twinge 
of the mouth, added, " we give it to the boys !" 
It was evident that his own rubicund visage and 
jolly rotundity of person had ripened under a 
different vintage. 

We sailed down the Potomac to Alexandria, 
and, mounting a pair of nags from the first liv- 
ery-stable, scampered off with loose rein to Mount 



198 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

Vernon. It was an early spring day, with a clear, 
exhilarating atmosphere, neither too warm nor 
cold; and our horses, as well as our ourselves, 
stirred to briskness and animation by the cheer- 
ing influences of the season, we moved rapidly 
and joyously on. The dogwood was everywhere 
in full bloom and odor, the fresh tobacco-plants 
were sprouting, and the grass of the rolling hills 
and broken banks of the river refreshed the eye 
with its tender green. 

We were soon at Mount Vernon, wandering 
about its deserted grounds, and inspecting with 
curious but not irreverent eyes the decaying old 
house and the neglected burial-place of Wash- 
ington. At that time the whole plantation seem- 
ed abandoned — the buildings a ruin, and the fields 
a waste. We could see no human being but one 
decrepit old negro, who started suddenly out 
from his lair at the mouth of the tomb, where 
he had been lying in wait to pounce upon some 
chance travellers like ourselves, for whose shil- 
lings he had a lively scent. 

Soon after this visit to Washington, on my re- 
turn to New York I sailed for Europe, and on 
reaching Edinburgh resumed my studies at the 
University. I had lost a year, and I was induced 
to make it up in a way that I afterward greatly 
regretted. I petitioned the Senatus'Academlcus, 



CONDENSED STUDY. 199 

as the corporate body of jDrofessors was callecl, 
to concede to me one out of the four years of 
study required for a degree, on the ground of 
an attendance on a previous course of lectures 
at the University of Pennsylvania. 

My petition was granted, unfortunately for 
nie, I think, for I was thus obliged to crowd into 
three years all the courses of lectures, for which 
four, the required number, are hardly adequate. 
I, therefore, was occupied almost every hour of 
the day in attending lectures, and at the same 
time had to j^repare for the first medical exami- 
nation, to take place at the end of the session. I 
naturally devoted myself almost exclusively to 
those subjects upon which I was to be exam- 
ined, and gave but little heed to the others, be- 
yond such attendance at the lectures on them as 
was necessary to comply with the regulations of 
the University. I passed the examination, and 
very creditably, I believe, at the end of the win- 
ter session, on the following subjects : Anatomy, 
Physiology, Chemistry, Materia Medica, Botany, 
and Natural History. 



200 :' .- ALLEGE DAYS. 



CHAPTER XYII. 

The Last Academic Year. — Disability of Professors. — Sir 
Charles Bell. — Supplementary Teachers. — Disgraceful In- 
efficiency. — Infirmary. — Heroic Practice. — High-pressure. 
— Breaking Down. — The Last Examination. — Dr. (Sir 
James Y.) Simpson. — Dr. Sav/neyson's Testimonials. — A 
Severe Calling to Account. — Defence of Thesis. — Capping. 
—Exit. 

After the usual three months of holiday, I 
was reduced to my last academic year (1839-'40) 
at the University, to consist of two sessions, the 
summer and winter. In nine months, which was 
all the time left to me, I undertook to do won- 
ders — not only to attend six courses of lectures 
— Practice of Medicine, Pathology, Midwifery, 
Surgery, Clinical Surger}'^, and Medical Jurispru- 
dence — but the in-door practice of the hospital, 
and out-door practice of the dispensary as well. 

I might have dispensed, as far as any good, 
they did me, with most of the lectures; for, ex- 
cepting the excellent course of Clinical Surgery 
by the great surgeon, Syme, there was not a sin- 
gle one that was efficiently given. Home, the 



INEFFICIENT PROFESSORS. 201 

professor of the Practice of Medicine, was so en- 
feebled by age and infirmity that, although he 
continued dailv to mumble somethino' from a 
manuscript before him, it was so inarticulate and 
inaudible that no one could discover what it was. 

Thompson, the professor of Pathology, the au- 
thor of the standard work on Inflammation, and 
one of the original founders, with Sydney Smith, 
Jeffrey, and Brougham, of the Edinburgh Me- 
view,midi among its earliest and ablest contribu- 
tors, had been long prostrate on his bed with 
paralysis. His son — not Allen Thompson, now 
the Glasgow professor, who might have well rep- 
resented his father, but the eldest, a very differ- 
ent man — was acting as his substitute, and had 
no qualifications whatsoever for the position. 

Hamilton, the professor of Midwifery, was also 
a hopeless invalid ; and an old pupil of his was 
appointed to read his manuscript lectures, which 
he did in a perfunctory way, as if he regarded 
it a bore to himself, as certainly it was to those 
who were forced to listen to him. 

Sir Charles Bell, who had been lately appoint- 
ed the successor of Liston, who had gone to 
London, where he became the greatest surgeon 
of the metropolis, was, indeed, a very eminent 
man, but an exceedingly inefiicient lecturer. He 
had reached that age when, without energy to 



202 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

struggle and compete with the present, we con- 
sole ourselves with the triumphs of the past. It 
was interesting to listen to him as he dilated 
upon his great discovery of the functions of the 
spinal cord and nerves, but he became occasion- 
ally very tedious as he repeated over and over 
again the details of his ingenious experiments, and 
the steps of his convincing deductions ; besides, 
it was not surgery. He, moreover, was quite in- 
firm, and lectured in a languid manner approach- 
ing to indifference, seeming as glad as we were 
when the hour of the lesson was over. 

The professor of Medical Jurisprudence had 
put what he knew of his subject in a little book, 
which was in the- hands of us all; and as he was 
a dull fellow, no one cared or needed to listen to 
his tedious repetitions of himself. 

It was disgraceful to the University that its 
teaching should have been allowed to remain in 
such an inefficient state. There were twelve med- 
ical professors in all, receiving large incomes from 
their classes, while only two or three out of the 
whole number could be justly said to lecture in 
a superior and thoroughly effective manner. All 
the rest were greatly surpassed by the private 
teachers, whose services, in fact, it was neces- 
sary to call into requisition to supplement the 
University courses and supply their defects, in 



ATTENDANCE IN THE SURGICAL WARDS. 203 

consequence of the superannuation, sickness, and 
other causes of the disability of the regular pro- 
fessors. The students were thus forced to pay 
double, while they received but a single benefit, 
and more for what they did not get than for 
what they did. The teachers outside always 
charged a great deal less for their good lectures 
than we were obliged to give the professors in- 
side of the University for their bad ones. The 
proper remedy for such a condition of things is 
to place all teachers properly licensed, whether 
collegiate or not, on the same footing; and as 
each would thus depend on his merits for com- 
pensation, only the capable and efficient would 
be found in the chair of professor or lecturer; 
for none is likely to be fool enough gratuitously 
to hold forth, day after day and year after year, 
to empty benches, as a University dullard does, 
and is so well paid for doing. 

I was a daily attendant at the Infirmary, wit- 
nessing the operations performed by the skil- 
ful hands of Syme and Ferguson, afterward Sir 
James Ferguson, the famous surgeon of London. 
I followed them also in their rounds in the surgi- 
cal wards, as I also did the various physicians in 
succession — Drs. Alison, Christison, and Craigie 
— in the medical services. 

Those were the heroic days of the practice 



204 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

of medicine— the days of puking, drenching, and 
bleeding. In every case of fever, whatever might 
be its nature, the preUminary measure was a 
vomit of a kind and of a strength that was al- 
most capable of making, contrary to nature, a 
horse sick. Two grains of tartar-emetic and a 
drachm of ipecacuanha were always given to 
each poor patient as soon as seen, whose flushed 
face, heated surface of body, and quickened pulse 
indicated the possibility of any disease Avhatever 
which could come within that comprehensive 
term, fever. It might turn out to be merely a 
disordered stomach, which a day of abstinence 
and repose might restore to its healthy condition ; 
or it might be an eruptive affection, a case of 
measles or small-pox, which would follow a course 
as regular and certain as the days of the week; 
or it might be the malignant typhus, where the 
virulent poison, corrupting the blood and pros- 
trating the strength, could only be eliminated 
by time and the power of endurance. It matter- 
ed not what disease was vaguely foreboded, the 
dose was certain ; the tartar-emetic and ipecacu- 
anha were always given. " The fever," that nev- 
er was or could be arrested in its natural prog- 
ress, " must be broken," exclaimed all the doc- 
tors, as they poured down their nauseous mixt- 
ures into the unwilling stomachs of their vie- 



HEROIC MEDICINE. 205 

tims, always sickening them, and reducing a 
strength already prostrated by the disease, and 
thus lessening the chances of a recovery wholly 
dependent upon the power of the organization 
to endure the poison, and finally, by outlasting 
the malignant effects, to recover its original con- 
dition of Ileal th. 

With the same boasted heroism of treatment, 
as it was then termed — audacious defiance of nat- 
ure we should now call it — the doctors treated 
every supposed case of inflammation. Venesec- 
tio ad deliquiiim — all the orders in the Infirma- 
ry were given in Latin — " bleeding to fainting," 
was heard at every bedside. This was followed 
by a prescription of tartar-emetic, to be taken 
every hour or so, and continued until the patient 
became well, as he may have done sometimes, for 
the resistance of nature is marvellously great, or 
until — but cirs longa, vita hrevis. There was al- 
ways, supplementary to this medical heroism of 
bleeding to fainting and sickening to exhaustion, 
a frequent purging with large doses of calomel 
and jalap, to complete the test of human endur- 
ance. The stimulating treatment in typhus was 
carried out to an extent that would seem incred- 
ible to the practitioner of tlie present day. An 
old disciple of the Brownonian School, one of the 
most famous doctors of his time in Edinburgh, 



206 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

was known to give a one quart bottle of brandy 
and two quart bottles of full-bodied claret to a 
single patient in the course of four-and-twenty 
liours ! 

I learned to flesh, I am sorry to say, my lancet 
in those heroic days, and to wage war against 
nature with it, and all the other deadly weapons 
of ancient art; but I rejoice to know that I 
liave survived to see these unheroic times, which, 
though too commonplace in many respects as 
they may be, have certainly the advantage of 
being more sensible and less dangerous. 

With all the many lectures, and the attend- 
ance upon the hospitals, and out-door and in-door 
practice of the dispensaries crowded into one 
short academic year, to which was added the 
special preparation requiring a great deal of 
study of numerous text-books for the prospec- 
tive examination for my degree, which naturally 
tormented me with anxieties and dismal forebod- 
ings of possible failure, I became so oppressed 
with work and worried with care that my health 
broke down under the pressure. I now felt to 
the full the imprudence of my proceeding in hav- 
ing shortened the regular course of study, and, 
instead of the one year less, which had been con- 
ceded in accordance with my injudicious peti- 
tion, I would have been glad to have many years 



CHAMBER OF HORROKS. 207 

more, so overwhelming seemed the burden I had 
to bear. I thought, at times, of giving up the 
whole effort in despair. I became nervous and 
hypochondriacal, and suffered a prostration of 
mind and body which, at intervals, has continued 
to afflict me, more or less, throughout the rest of 
ray life to this day — a prolonged misery which 
I attribute to the absurd attempt at doing in a 
few months what could only have been properly 
done in as many years. 

I, however, persisted, and offered myself for 
the examination, but with fear and trembling. 
On entering the chamber of horrors — the small 
commonplace room, the plain table covered with 
green baize holding a business -looking blank- 
book, some scattered sheets of white paper, and 
pens and ink — the two or three familiar profess- 
ors, smiling and chatting at their ease, at one 
end, while at the other stood an empty horse- 
hair chair, seemed, by their very simplicity and 
habitualness, a mockery of my woe, and height- 
ened my alarms. I could have better endured 
a more ceremonious reception, a statelier apart- 
ment, a more solemn conclave. Greater show of 
official form and severity would have stiffened 
my relaxed nerves to the firmness of resistance, 
and compelled self-command. Ceremony, more- 
over, would have been a diversion, drawing to 



208 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

itself much that in this cynical simplicity of my 
examination was concentrated upon me. Every- 
thing indicated business, and nothing but busi- 
ness, and a most dreadful business. 

The first person I confronted was Dr. Simp- 
son, who had just been elected to the Professor- 
ship of Midwifery, on the death of Dr. Hamilton. 
He arose and met me as I entered the door, and 
shook hands in the most friendly way. I thought 
it but polite, in return for his civil reception, to 
be civil too, so I congratulated him upon his ap- 
pointment. "And you, sir," he answered, with a 
curl of his Hp, " did everything in your power to 
prevent it." I knew at once what he referred to, 
and the knowledge was not calculated to revive 
my failing courage. 

During the very active and excited canvass 
for the election of a Professor of Midwifery, Dr. 
Simpson had printed a large volume of Testi- 
monials, and distributed it everywhere. This 
publication was not in the best taste, and, lend- 
ing itself obviously to burlesque, I had traves- 
tied it under the title of " Dr. Sawneyson's Testi- 
monials." The squib was hawked about in front 
of the college, read by all the Tory professors, 
who smiled approvingly upon the reputed au- 
thor, thrown into every reading-room, and sent 
to all the newspapers; and a popular medical 



SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. 209 

journal in London reprinted it in full in its col- 
umns. It was a great success, owing to the time- 
liness of its production, and not to any merit it 
possessed. Dr. Simpson, who was a brother of a 
Radical baker of Edinburgh, an influential mem- 
ber of the Town Council, was opposed by most 
of the professors, who were Tories, and of great 
aristocratical pretensions. The students follow- 
ing in their wake were antagonistic too, and I 
also; though, as a foreigner, I ought to have 
expressed no political sympathy, and if I did, 
it might have been expected that, being a Re- 
publican, I should not be ranged on the Tory 
side. Simpson, however, was elected, principal- 
ly through the influence of his Radical brother 
of the Common Council, with which the choice 
rested. He took ample revenge in due course of 
time upon all the Tory professors, and his other 
virulent antagonists, by becoming one of the 
greatest medical teachers in the University, and 
most eminent accoucheurs and physicians in the 
world. 

His speech to me was certainly not very mag- 
nanimous, and his conduct subsequently still less 
so, if, as I suspected, he made my examination 
more severe and difficult than it otherwise would 
have been. I may, however, have done him in- 
justice by my suspicion. At any rate, he was 

14 



210 MY COLLEGE DAYS. 

entitled to ask me what he pleased, provided it 
was pertinent to the subject upon which I was 
to pass an examination, and it was my duty to 
answer it. I passed, however, by hook or by 
crook, the Midwifery as well as the other exami- 
nations. 

The next step toward obtaining the degree 
was to defend my thesis ; an operation whicli 
was soon and easily performed, for it consisted of 
little more than a polite interchange of courtesies 
between Dr. Alison, my challenger on the occa- 
sion, and myself. He shook hands with me, and 
expressed the hope that I was well, and I return- 
ed the compliment, shaking him by the hand, and 
expressing the hope that he was well. He may 
have added a word or two in regard to ray the- 
sis, which treated of a subject he was fond, in his 
lectures, of descanting upon — " The Influence of 
Mind on Body." 

I was now ready for the last scene of all, the 
"capping," as it is termed. I, accordingly, on 
the day appointed, August 1st, 1840, in order to 
undergo the operation, passed in a long line of 
my fellow-graduates, one hundred and eleven in 
number, in front of the whole body of the Fac- 
ulty, seated on a dais or platform, and in face of 
a large number of miscellaneous spectators, who 
tilled the great hall of the University. Each of 



GRADUATED. 211 

US stopped, first before one of the professors, to 
sign the Hippocratic oatli, and then before the 
J^rimariuSj or Principal of tlie University, sit- 
ting on a raised seat in the centre, who, lifting 
the cap, which was made of pasteboard covered 
with black stuff of some kind, and resembled a 
gigantic extinguisher in form, put and held it on 
the head of each, while he went through a short 
Latin formula, pronouncing the candidate a doc- 
tor, with all the rights and privileges pertaining 
thereto. Having been thus capped, I passed on, 
and, receiving my diploma, disappeared from the 
stage. 



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